Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes » lyrics

NEW: Delete All Lyrics

dougscripts — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 18:07:34 +0000

It’s often interesting to look through the search queries this site gets to see what people are looking for. Over the past few months the phrase “delete all lyrics” has been showing up pretty frequently. Don’t know why it is—seems like it wasn’t so long ago the phrase “find song lyrics” was more prominent. Fads! Who can predict ‘em?

I already have a script that will delete the lyrics of a selection of tracks. But this would be rather slow if you used it against every track in the library. So I’ve posted Delete All Lyrics. This is a Cocoa-AppleScript applet (for OS 10.6 and 10.7 only) that will fairly quickly go through all the tracks in the “Music” playlist and delete the lyrics. So whether you’re tired of trying to sing-along or just need to clear out some bytes, it should do the trick.

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A Taste of Music Publishing

dougscripts — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 14:17:24 +0000

If you want to get an idea of what music publishing is like–and how it is not like the recording industry–read this NYT article that profiles Martin Bandier, chief executive of music publisher Sony/ATV. The article’s accompanying photo may be all you need to see. And this: So it’s come to pass that after decades of playing second fiddle to the much bigger and brighter stars in the industry’s recording business, music publishing is on a roll. It is, as its executives like to say, a business of pennies and nickels, but that small change generates $3 billion in annual revenue, throws off enviably predictable streams of cash and has caught the eye of private equity firms and large institutional investors who are snapping up catalogs of stars like Frank Sinatra and Madonna.

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NMPA Sues Motive Force

dougscripts — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 00:01:19 +0000

Motive Force LLC is behind LyricWiki. From an August 27, 2009 article in Ecommerce Journal: “The suit against LyricWiki [by the National Music Publishers Association] also states that the site “knowingly assist[s] and induce[s] third-party software developers to distribute copies of lyrics from Plaintiff’s Songs to consumers’ computers and personal media player.” However, earlier this month [LyricWiki's] Sean Colombo published a letter on the LyricWiki API Developers Google Group telling developers that licensing agreements with big music publishers meant that the company could no longer add programmatic access to LyricWiki’s collection.”

Music publishers have waited way too long to do this and it’ll be the whole RIAA thing all over again. The music publishing business may be bigger profit-wise than the recording business (and after all, before recorded music, publishing was “The Music Industry”) so they’ve got time and resources to seriously entrench on this.

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LyricWiki API Blocking SOAP?

dougscripts — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 18:35:28 +0000

I haven’t seen anything definitive, but over the past couple of days SOAP calls to LyricWiki.org’s API are being refused with a “Transport error”. It’s possible the API is down or that it is flat-out blocking SOAP calls. This affects the ability of the Lyrics Via LyricWiki script to function correctly.

Updated: Yes, The LyricWiki API is no more.

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UPDATED: Lyrics via LyricWiki v2.1

dougscripts — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 14:55:20 +0000

Lyrics Via LyricWiki v2.1 addresses some changes in LyricWiki page formatting.

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UPDATED: Lyrics via LyricWiki v2.0

dougscripts — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 13:49:51 +0000

Since LyricWiki is no longer able to provide lyrics to applications from its API, I put a workaround in Lyrics Via LyricWiki. This script will use the name and artist of the single selected or playing track as the basis for a SOAP query to LyricWiki.org; fruitful results will be displayed so you can choose to apply the lyrics to the particular track.

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LyricWiki Busts Its API

dougscripts — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 15:08:47 +0000

If you run an application or script which uses LyricWiki to supply lyrics (such as Lyrics Via LyricWiki) you will probably see this message instead of the lyric results you expected:

Unfortunately, due to licensing restrictions from some of the major music publishers we can no longer return lyrics through the LyricWiki API (where this application gets some or all of its lyrics)…(Please note: this is not the fault of the developer who created this application, but is a restriction imposed by the music publishers themselves.)

I could have guessed this clampdown from publishers was coming.

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UPDATED: Lyrics Via LyricWiki v1.1

dougscripts — Mon, 11 May 2009 14:34:59 +0000

Lyrics Via LyricWiki has been updated to v1.1. This script will use the name and artist of the single selected or playing track as the basis for a SOAP query to LyricWiki.org; fruitful results will be displayed so you can choose to apply the lyrics to the particular track.

Latest version addresses issue with properly converting high ASCII text.

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NEW: Lyrics via LyricWiki

dougscripts — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 13:28:00 +0000

Lyrics Via LyricWiki will use the name and artist of the selected or playing track as the basis for a SOAP query to LyricWiki.org; fruitful results will be displayed so you can choose to apply the lyrics to the particular track.

If I had a dollar for all the Correspondents who sent me the AppleScript SOAP call used in this script, I could take a week off. Well, maybe take a long weekend. Information on LyricWiki’s SOAP webservice is here.

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Lyrics Follow-Up

dougscripts — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 16:10:52 +0000

Correspondent Otto K emailed me to say that Yahoo! Music’s lyric site, though not terribly complete, provides licensed and legal lyrics.

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