LyricWiki

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LyricWiki (from April 2014 to October 2017 LyricWikia ) is a user-created song text collection and until 2019 was a MediaWiki -based, English-language wiki for song texts ( English : lyrics ). Since the deactivation of the edit function in April 2019, LyricWiki is a pure song text collection without wiki character.

The site has been online since April 2006 and, with over 2,050,000 pages of content, including around 1,701,000 song texts, was one of the largest MediaWikis on the Internet . LyricWiki has been part of the Wikia project since September 2009 for licensing reasons .

Content and structure

LyricWiki saw itself as a freely editable database, with the aim of collecting the texts of as many songs as possible and making them available for free retrieval with a web browser . Neither the content, language, level of awareness nor topicality of the songs played a role in the inclusion in the database, so that in addition to the globally successful artists, the songs of only regionally known groups and artists were included. Secondly, the creation and maintenance of discographies on the artists was sought. The songs were assigned to the respective albums and artists. Most pages also provide information such as record labels , genres or information on official awards. There are also links to other databases such as MusicBrainz and Discogs or online shops such as Amazon and the iTunes Store on almost every page. LyricWiki also hosts translations and transcriptions of some of the lyrics; However, these make up a far smaller proportion of content pages than the regular song lyrics.

To realize one was MediaWiki software used which enabled the visitors to participate without registering on the structure of the page. Via a SOAP interface, it was initially possible to directly access and manipulate the database with external programs. Programs such as Winamp , Amarok , Windows Media Player , musikCube , foobar2000 support the retrieval of song texts for the piece of music being played either by default or using an additional module that can be installed later. In 2009, however, this type of access to the lyrics of the database had to be removed again.

history

founding

LyricWiki was founded as "LyricWiki.org" in April 2006 by the then RIT student Sean Colombo. In his justification it is said that he was tired of the intrusive advertisements on other lyrics sites; he was also looking for a reliable source for song lyrics. When he couldn't find a suitable site, he quickly founded LyricWiki.org.

Start time

Shortly after it was founded, the site won the DreamHost Site of the Month award for April 2006. This helped it to see a surge in visitor numbers right from the start.

Most of the pages were copied from other websites by a search bot called "ÜberBot". On April 14, 2006 alone, the last day of the first insert period, over 26,000 pages of song lyrics were created. As a quickly compiled database, these should form the basis for the project.

Lawsuit and move

LyricWiki.org has been an independent project since its inception in 2006 until August 2009, when the National Music Publishers Association , or NMPA, filed a lawsuit for millions of dollars in damages for copyright infringement . Motive Force LLC, which was also founded by Colombo in 2005 and owned LyricWiki.org, was just one of many sued companies; The NMPA also filed a lawsuit against Colombo itself for damages amounting to millions. In order to protect against a total loss of all collected content, the site was integrated into the Wikia project in September 2009 and was henceforth only called LyricWiki. Wikia had a contract with Gracenote through which all available lyrics were licensed on LyricWiki. Accordingly, lyrics of unlicensed songs have not been available on LyricWiki since then. Furthermore, all programmatic access to song texts in the database had to be prevented, which happened on August 3, 2009, which is why the SOAP interface has since become less interesting, especially for connecting to media players for displaying song texts.

Withdrawal of the founder

In September 2012 Colombo announced its withdrawal from almost all LyricWiki matters. In the notice it was said that he wanted to focus holistically on his new project, a company incorporated in 2011 Software -Company for Xbox - games .

Renamed LyricWikia

As of April 2014 LyricWiki was officially called LyricWikia. A standardization of the nomenclature of Wikia-Wikis (short: Wikias) was given as the reason for the renaming . The page has been designed in a purple shade since then. At the same time as the renaming, the Lyrically app was published, with which the lyrics can be accessed via smartphone .

In October 2017 the website was renamed back to "LyricWiki". However, the purple color scheme that was introduced in April 2014 remained.

Situation until 2019

With a total of around 1,925,000 pages of content, LyricWiki was number 15 among the largest MediaWikis in the world at the beginning of May 2018 and comprised a total of over 1,701,000 song texts, almost 170,000 albums and around 81,400 artists. The number of unlicensed and therefore unavailable lyrics was around 490 songs. About the first ten percent of an existing song text is available via the API in order to be able to determine the match between the searched and found song. The display of the entire website as in a web browser, however, is expressly allowed, as is access via Wikia's own Lyrically app , which only shows the official versions of the song lyrics, not those set by the community.

Censorship and deactivation of the wiki function

After tightening the terms of use, attempts were made from 2017 to censor or delete album covers and texts that violated them. It was initially about content that portrayed “nudity” or was “excessively sexual”. The reasoning stated that Fandom wanted to be a "family-friendly site" and that some advertisements were linked to conditions as to what kind of content they could be displayed alongside. For this reason, such content cannot be provided. After a discussion with the wiki administrators, it was agreed to regard album covers as works of art and thus to tolerate mere nudity, and to use censored (for example pixelated ) versions of sexual images .

In addition, song titles and texts containing words that were considered racist were later censored and deleted. As a result, there were discussions between employees of Fandom and LyricWiki. The latter pointed out that the content provided only documented what the reality was (similar to a quotation) and that censorship or selective inclusion of content would run counter to the common goal of a comprehensive collection. They also criticized the vague wording in the guidelines and complained about difficulties in implementing the requirements, as there were no objective guidelines as to whether the content in question was tolerable or "too explicit" and therefore inadmissible. After some content deleted by Fandom employees was repeatedly re-uploaded by various LyricWiki users - partly out of ignorance, partly due to different interpretations of the guidelines - Fandom completely deactivated the editing function of the wiki in April 2019 in order to prevent such material from being added again. The announcement of this decision also stated that LyricWiki was no longer a wiki, but that it could still be used as a collection of lyrics.

Trivia

  • The 1,000,000th content page was created shortly after the move on November 13, 2009. LyricWiki reached this milestone over a month earlier than the German-language Wikipedia.
  • Despite its immense size, LyricWiki has been maintained by only 28 different administrators since its inception , of which 7 were most recently active.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Statistics of the wiki (as of May 1, 2018)
  2. Overview of content numbers
  3. a b List of the 20 largest MediaWikis
  4. FAQ on the integration of LyricWiki in Wikia
  5. ^ User page from Sean Colombo
  6. DreamHost Award “Page of the Month”, winner 2006 ( Memento of the original from March 22, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / wiki.dreamhost.com
  7. ÜberBots contributions in April 2006
  8. “US music publishers sue online lyrics sites” - The Register dated August 26, 2009
  9. ^ Letter to the developers of the LyricWiki API
  10. Farewell message from Sean Colombo, version from September 10, 2012
  11. "BlueLine Game Studios" weblog
  12. Announcement of the renaming of LyricWiki to LyricWikia
  13. ^ Blog post by a Wikia employee on the Lyrically app
  14. Entry in the administrator portal, version from October 25, 2017
  15. Category "Unlicensed Lyrics"
  16. Explicit images / text . In: LyricWiki Community Portal, January 4, 2017, accessed April 14, 2019
  17. ^ Closing the wiki to editing . In: LyricWiki Community Portal, April 2, 2019, accessed April 14, 2019
  18. Archived message on the 1,000,000th page in LyricWiki
  19. Milestones of the German language Wikipedia
  20. ^ Administrators of LyricWiki