Google and their streaming service Google Play Music have a new partner to improve lyrics search online and enhance their music streaming.
Google have partnered with LyricFind to provide deeper searches and more song lyrics. The partnership will provide track lyrics from over 4,000 publishers and allow all these tracks to be displayed in Google searches.
From now on you can save yourself one whole click when you’re looking for lyrics so you can jam along to a song. Google’s partnership with LyricFind embeds their lyrics into search results, so when you type ‘song name lyrics’ it will come up under your search bar, and above the search results – saving you eons of time.
Google hope, not just to make your singalongs easier, but to highlight their music streamer – Google Play Music. In the search display where you can view the lyrics you will be directed towards Google Play Music to access the full song’s lyrics and listen via their free radio service, with a sneaky offering of their (very good) monthly subscription service.
LyricFind expect the partnership to be very profitable for both parties. Chief Executive and co-founder Darryl Ballantyne said: “It should be a significant revenue stream. I can’t get into the rates, but we expect it to be millions of dollars generated for publishers and songwriters as a result of this. It’s all based on usage. Royalties are paid based on the number of times a lyric is viewed. The more it’s viewed, the more publishers get paid.”
That’s right, artists actually get paid when you (legally) view their lyrics). It may surprise you to hear that displaying song lyrics requires a license, something which Google have internationally though their only launching their new lyrics features in the US for now.
Google have been slowly embedding more and more information into their search results over the years, and this is the next step. You can instantly see a bio for notable figures and celebs, the casting of movies, track listing and various links for music, and now lyrics directly from Google’s results. It may benefit Google but I think we can all agree it’s pretty damned convenient.