AOL and MTV Networks are unveiling new services that will allow consumers to search for and view the lyrics to popular songs.
The initiatives are the latest examples of music publishers cashing in on song lyrics by licensing the words to popular tunes for reproduction on Web sites and television.
The publishing business is in the midst of rolling out official online-lyric offerings after years of only being available through unauthorized sites. Publishers license lyrics for online reproduction in exchange for a portion of ad revenues from the sites.
Yahoo! Music and Real Networks’ Rhapsody, have also launched industry-sanctioned music lyric offerings this year.
With the arrival of legal alternatives, music publishers are also stepping up their efforts to shut down popular Web sites like AZ Lyrics Universe and Lyrics.com that publish lyrics to songs without their permission.
AOL Music will debut its service in the coming weeks. On top of a searchable database, AOL will offer lyrics as a complement to other editorial features. Meanwhile, MTV Networks yesterday announced that it plans to introduce a number of music lyric features across MTV, VH1 and country music channel, CMT starting in November.
Lyrics will be searchable online at MTV.com, VH1.com or CMT.com and on mobile phones via , MTV Mobile, VH1 Mobile and CMT Mobile.
Gracenote, a digital music services company that aggregates song lyrics from publishers, is supplying lyrics to both AOL and MTV.
The catalogs are expected to comprise around 500,000 tracks at launch, including songs from Justin Timberlake, Beyoncé, Black Eyed Peas, Elton John, Rihanna and Tim McGraw.