iTunes Suggestion: Display Lyrics
I sent this idea off to Apple an upgrade or two or three ago and haven't heard a damn thing yet. Perhaps I sound a little arrogant from wondering why Apple doesn't listen to ever-so-important me, but I'd say it's more frustration due to selfishness in that I want this feature. In any case, I feel like this is a great idea that would simply make iTunes kick ass even more than it's already doing. Here's what I'm thinking...
Each song would be linked to a text file that would look something like this sample from Outkast's Rosa Parks.
0019 Ah ha, hush that fuss
0021 Everybody move to the back of the bus
0023 Do you wanna bump and slump with us
0025 We the type of people make the club get crunk
Each new line of the text file would be a new line of the song (or however you felt like dividing the lyrics up). The numbers in front of the line of lyrics are the time those lyrics start, the first two digits being the minute and the last two digits being the seconds, so the "Ah ha" line starts 0 minutes, 19 seconds into the song. Then whatever starts after the space which follows the four digits would be the line until the return at the end of the line and the next number. By implication, a line of lyrics is "done" by the time the next ones start.
iTunes would take these things and display them in the iTunes window. It could go right in where it currently shows the artist and title of the song. With a little GUI rework, you could have a line at the top scrolling the lyrics, a line below that doing what it currently does, and the line below that with the time, also as is currently the case.
When iTunes starts playing a song, it would load up its lyrics text file and scroll (or display, or whatever) those words in the lyrics field to match the time in the text file. It would work in the small or large versions of the iTunes window, and could easily make its way to the iPod as well. So the first line above would scroll across the screen starting at 19 seconds but already being across by the time the next line starts at 21 seconds. You'd probably need to have them start a little bit before they are to begin so that the lyrics are visible when they need to be. But technically this is beyond feasible - it's a piece of cake.
The first obvious question is where do these text files come from? Obviously the artists themselves could put out an "official" lyrics file with each song. But for the majority of songs that won't have that, the users can do it. Similar to the naming system set up by the CDDB, which lets users upload the artist, song title, and so on to the CDDB database if the song is unknown, the iTunes lyrics implementation could use some kind of central database where users could upload the lyrics for things that weren't there already. This could grow as users put more and more information in there.
Moreover, this would open up further possibilities. Karaoke, anyone? Do one of those things where the voice is struck from the song (like some karaoke stereos have) and you're iTunes has just become a karaoke machine. I personally would like to use it to study languages... listening to music is a great way to brush up and learn new vocab words. It's just such a hassle to always have to dig up the lyrics on the net for those parts where you can't quite catch what they're saying. And, besides all that, never again would you mistake CCR's "There's a bad moon on the rise" for "There's a bathroom on the right." (Fess up, I know you just had an "Oh, that's what they were saying!" moment.)
This would just make iTunes so much cooler than it has been up to this point.
Each song would be linked to a text file that would look something like this sample from Outkast's Rosa Parks.
0019 Ah ha, hush that fuss
0021 Everybody move to the back of the bus
0023 Do you wanna bump and slump with us
0025 We the type of people make the club get crunk
Each new line of the text file would be a new line of the song (or however you felt like dividing the lyrics up). The numbers in front of the line of lyrics are the time those lyrics start, the first two digits being the minute and the last two digits being the seconds, so the "Ah ha" line starts 0 minutes, 19 seconds into the song. Then whatever starts after the space which follows the four digits would be the line until the return at the end of the line and the next number. By implication, a line of lyrics is "done" by the time the next ones start.
iTunes would take these things and display them in the iTunes window. It could go right in where it currently shows the artist and title of the song. With a little GUI rework, you could have a line at the top scrolling the lyrics, a line below that doing what it currently does, and the line below that with the time, also as is currently the case.
When iTunes starts playing a song, it would load up its lyrics text file and scroll (or display, or whatever) those words in the lyrics field to match the time in the text file. It would work in the small or large versions of the iTunes window, and could easily make its way to the iPod as well. So the first line above would scroll across the screen starting at 19 seconds but already being across by the time the next line starts at 21 seconds. You'd probably need to have them start a little bit before they are to begin so that the lyrics are visible when they need to be. But technically this is beyond feasible - it's a piece of cake.
The first obvious question is where do these text files come from? Obviously the artists themselves could put out an "official" lyrics file with each song. But for the majority of songs that won't have that, the users can do it. Similar to the naming system set up by the CDDB, which lets users upload the artist, song title, and so on to the CDDB database if the song is unknown, the iTunes lyrics implementation could use some kind of central database where users could upload the lyrics for things that weren't there already. This could grow as users put more and more information in there.
Moreover, this would open up further possibilities. Karaoke, anyone? Do one of those things where the voice is struck from the song (like some karaoke stereos have) and you're iTunes has just become a karaoke machine. I personally would like to use it to study languages... listening to music is a great way to brush up and learn new vocab words. It's just such a hassle to always have to dig up the lyrics on the net for those parts where you can't quite catch what they're saying. And, besides all that, never again would you mistake CCR's "There's a bad moon on the rise" for "There's a bathroom on the right." (Fess up, I know you just had an "Oh, that's what they were saying!" moment.)
This would just make iTunes so much cooler than it has been up to this point.
posted by Vincent at 1:37 AM
<< Home