Yahoo's New Music Lyrics System |
Written by Razvan Jr
Monday, 08 October 2007
|
In today's
world, many people turn to the internet to find information about any subject
that one may think about. One subject that is increasing in popularity is
searching for full music lyrics to all and any genres of songs. This is
fairly simple to accomplish with a simple search in Google, but some people
worry that in the very near future, this may or may not be changing.
Yahoo recently announced a new feature
that would allow users to search music lyrics from their site. Yahoo has
obtained licensing for tons of artists from many different record labels.
In exchange for the allowed use of the music lyrics, Yahoo provides a portion
of all advertising revenue gained from the site to the artists and record labels.
Some owners of other music lyrics
websites have worried that Yahoo's new system will take away a large portion of
their site's traffic. One website I contacted even suggested that they
would have to take an additional approach, such as offering a new mobile-based
lyrics system for cell-phone users, in response to the loss of advertising
revenue due to Yahoo's new music lyrics system. Additionally, some lyrics
websites are disallowed from posting lyrics to certain artists or bands due to
copyright issues. Yahoo's system is an attempt to get around this problem
and offers music lyrics to any song the user would want to search for.
While Yahoo's approach is an elegant
solution, there are still a couple of drawbacks to their music lyrics
system. Part of the deal agreed upon by Yahoo and various record labels
include the requirement for all lyrics to be in picture format versus pure
text. This is mainly to prevent users from copying and pasting the text
of lyrics and to prevent online robots from crawling their webpage with the
sole intent to steal the text of the lyrics. This also has a drawback, as
mentioned above. Since the lyrics are in picture format, search engines
will not be able to see the text in the lyrics, and searches where users enter
a verse from their favorite song will not return a result from Yahoo's system.
Yahoo's music lyrics search also suffers
from the fact that the "typical" internet user just doesn't know
about it. With Google being the current king of search engines, a good
portion of internet users have no idea that Yahoo offers such a system.
These users will continue to search for music lyrics as they always have in the
past, through a typical Google search. This, coupled with the fact that
90% of search engine traffic comes from Google, will mean that although Yahoo's
system is a nice approach, many online music lyrics websites will not be as
heavily hit as some once thought after Yahoo's announcement. One thing is
for certain: unless Yahoo takes over as the king of search engines, most users
will continue to find music lyrics online in the same fashion they have used in
the past, through Google.
Summary: An
in-depth look and response to Yahoo's recent announcement of offering music
lyrics online. The article generates the conclusion that while many
lyrics websites have been worried about a loss in the amount of traffic, this
may not be as big of an issue as once thought.
Article Source: http://www.ArticleBlast.com |
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