[HN Gopher] Lyrics in ogg/vorbis and MP3 files
___________________________________________________________________
Lyrics in ogg/vorbis and MP3 files
Author : severine
Score : 84 points
Date : 2022-03-08 12:53 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (cweiske.de)
(TXT) w3m dump (cweiske.de)
| Saint_Genet wrote:
| I wrote an mp3/ogg/flac/acc metadata parser over 10 years ago,
| and it was an absolute shower of shit with regards to character
| sets and compatibility between players and encoders. Has anything
| changed?
| cpach wrote:
| One thing that changed is that many users abandoned local audio
| files in favour of Spotify etc...
| toyg wrote:
| As others said, the only thing that changed is that most people
| stopped caring and moved on to streaming.
| declnz wrote:
| In short I'd say no
| Hello71 wrote:
| It's worse now, because there's more formats. Unfortunately,
| MP3 and AAC are still popular enough that software needs to
| support it, so you now need to support mp3/ogg/flac/aac _plus_
| opus, which is usually ogg container, but has its own
| additional metadata, and also sometimes it 's in matroska
| container instead.
| extheat wrote:
| Seems like a simple problem to solve as long as there's support
| for arbitrary metadata in the file format. Just store the LRC
| data in as plaintext in one of those fields and call it a day. Of
| course without a proper written standard it's going to be a
| hodgepodge of everyone inventing their own standard way of doing
| something catered to their use case. It's an inevitable part of
| the software world.
|
| If you absolutely need to pack the data into the audio file you
| can probably make a simple extractor program to read the audio
| file and extract the lyric data into a format that the player can
| read natively then feed it in to the player. Or patch the player
| software to support your format. The former is usually the easier
| option, of course.
| mileza wrote:
| I think you're missing the forest for the trees. It's one thing
| to store the lyrics in the file, but the entire UX around the
| use of those lyrics is pratically non-existent.
|
| Storing the text is the easy part. Procuring files with lyrics
| baked in or adding lyrics to your pre-existing library is
| another. And so far, almost no music player supports them,
| their UI isn't necessarily optimized for displaying lyrics, and
| there is no widespread standard for their format.
| shimonabi wrote:
| I recently wanted to add bookmarks/keywords to a recording of a
| lecture, but was amazed I couldn't find any software that does
| that. And yes, I've seen the VLC bookmark plugin.
|
| I ended with writing timestamps with comments using Notepad.
| xattt wrote:
| Embedding lyrics in files is great, but still half-baked. You're
| often opening up the lyrics to see what the words are in that
| particular moment in the song.
|
| Apple Music took this feature one step further and actually
| provides a way to sync lyrics to the music. The UI is very
| intuitive as well. Not sure if Spotify offers this too.
| woodruffw wrote:
| It's really unfortunate that there isn't a single, high-quality
| reference source (with an API) for song lyrics, the way there is
| for artist/album metadata (MusicBrainz) or cover art (Cover Art
| Archive).
|
| No source that I'm aware of provides a public API, leaving tools
| like beets to haphazardly scrape a handful of websites[1].
|
| [1]: https://beets.readthedocs.io/en/v1.6.0/plugins/lyrics.html
| krrrh wrote:
| This is as close as it comes, they've been around for years,
| and used to be the source for the hundreds of lyrics sites that
| used to exist.
|
| https://www.musixmatch.com
|
| I can't remember if it was them or another service (edit: I'm
| pretty sure it was actually https://www.lyricfind.com ) that
| used to have a free licensing tier if your lyrics site included
| their ads, which were for a scam ring tone subscription service
| that would trick users into a ringtone "subscription" billed to
| their mobile carrier. The ads promised MIDI ringtones on every
| lyric page, but usually they didn't have them for more obscure
| songs.
|
| https://euobserver.com/news/29005
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _It 's really unfortunate that there isn't a single, high-
| quality reference source (with an API) for song lyrics..._
|
| Does Genius not serve this purpose?
| https://docs.genius.com/#songs-h2
| woodruffw wrote:
| My understanding, which might be dated, is that the Genius
| API intentionally does not serve lyrics in a machine-readable
| format to avoid IP problems.
|
| That's why LyricsGenius uses an HTML scraper to extract the
| lyrics[1], and why other tools (like beets) have data quality
| issues.
|
| [1]: https://lyricsgenius.readthedocs.io/en/master/how_it_wor
| ks.h...
| declnz wrote:
| It's really unfortunate that there isn't a single, high-quality
| reference source (with an API) for song lyrics, the way there
| is for artist/album metadata (MusicBrainz) or cover art (Cover
| Art Archive).
|
| My gut tells me this is because labels (or even streaming
| giants) realised it's monetisable and thus will pursue any API
| that gets big enough :(
| egypturnash wrote:
| I wish more people would _use_ these, whenever I buy music off of
| iTunes or Bandcamp it almost _never_ comes with the lyrics
| embedded. I know Bandcamp supports it because I recall being
| delightfully surprised by some music an acquaintance sold there
| having lyrics; not sure I can recall ever getting them off of
| iTunes. Every now and then iTunes sells me an album that comes
| with a PDF of the CD booklet, that's about the closest it comes.
| electroly wrote:
| I assume iTunes must just be using some other mechanism for
| conveying lyrics. Most new songs in the store _do_ have lyrics;
| you can see them in the iOS and tvOS Music apps (not sure about
| desktop since I don 't use the desktop app). I just spot
| checked a couple albums I bought from iTunes recently and every
| song I checked has lyrics. It even has them timed to the music
| like karaoke. If I go back a few years, I do see albums with no
| lyrics. Is this maybe something they've pushed recently?
| pathartl wrote:
| Unfortunately, locally stored music is a dead media.
| jhoechtl wrote:
| What makes you think that? Dead as in record sales, CD sales?
| pathartl wrote:
| Records are a different story because they're more of a
| collector's item. Interesting with CD sales going up, but I
| assume shortly we're going to start seeing the CD/DVD drive
| go away. I mean it's already out of most of our desktops,
| almost all of our laptops, and who honestly has a dedicated
| CD player these days?
|
| Then you have artists like Kanye who are essentially
| versioning their music. It's happening more often and might
| render CD's as an incompatible or undesirable media.
| egypturnash wrote:
| _shrug_ It still works for me. And presumably Epic thinks
| it's worth something or they wouldn't have bought Bandcamp
| just now.
| indigochill wrote:
| I'm not fully convinced that Epic believes in locally
| stored music. Yes, Bandcamp is one of the last bastions of
| that, but Bandcamp is so laissez-faire I just can't see a
| megacorp like Epic tolerating DRM-free music sales (or even
| free hosting of free music, as I've used Bandcamp for)
| forever. Historically big business is antagonistic towards
| the DRM-free movement.
|
| TBF, Epic hasn't really done anything to antagonize the
| DRM-free movement (and open-sourcing UE4 was a huge PR win
| for them), but neither have I seen them really go out of
| their way to support it the way, say, CD Projekt did with
| GOG, a store that at least at one time (and maybe still)
| exclusively sold DRM-free games.
|
| I'm more inclined to read the Bandcamp acquisition as
| Epic's hipper eventual answer to iTunes, given their spat
| with Apple doesn't seem fully over. But I guess we'll see.
| I will admit I'm taking the news of the acquisition with
| more cynicism than is strictly warranted based on the
| observable facts.
| mackrevinack wrote:
| theres quite a lot of things around these days that make it
| easier to get a similar experience to online services like
| spotify. (as long as music discovery isnt your main priority)
|
| i use syncthing to sync my library between all my devices.
| resilio sync with its "selective sync" feature is another
| option if you have a huge library on one device but only want
| to sync certain things to a device like a phone that has less
| storage space.
|
| i have a synology network drive that has a music server built
| in. its also fairly easy these days to get a VPS server up
| and running and install something like
| navidrome/funkwhale/airsonic. they all have docker containers
| as well which can make the whole process a bit quicker.
|
| things like tailscale/zerotier let you access the music
| library on your server from anywhere with an internet
| connection.
|
| beets/musicbrainz make it easier to manage metadata and album
| art.
| pathartl wrote:
| It's certainly still possible, but it's what it's always
| been, a niche solution for a small demographic.
| Teever wrote:
| It really isn't.
|
| There are very active communities of people who collect and
| distribute media.
|
| check out https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/
| pathartl wrote:
| I myself have a 135TB home server. I am well aware and
| invested in local data hoarding. It still doesn't remove
| the fact that it's getting harder to find certain media.
| Additionally, most people can't spin up a server... hell
| most people I know could barely sync their iPod to iTunes.
| Owning your own media is more expensive in both money and
| time. That's not a compromise that most people want to deal
| with.
| causi wrote:
| I've yet to find a music/lyrics app that isn't half-broken or
| riddled with spyware and advertising. Edit: I thought saying
| "app" made it clear I needed it for a mobile device, Android,
| sorry. Foobar2000 is my choice of music player, it just doesn't
| do lyrics on mobile. I do think it's a testament to how
| underserved this niche is that all the replies are either desktop
| programs or mobile apps that don't support displaying lyrics
| while playing a song.
| iggldiggl wrote:
| I cannot absolutely vouch for it on the spyware front (though I
| didn't encounter anything suspicious so far), but
| https://www.mediahuman.com/lyrics-finder/ does work (i.e. isn't
| half-broken) and doesn't contain advertising, either.
| mynameismon wrote:
| If someone is looking for Android, check out Musicolet.
| Absolutely free, doesn't even request the WiFi permissions so
| one can be assured it does not track. Also is lightweight, and
| (relatively) customisable.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| Been using Musicolet. I agree that it's great.
|
| https://krosbits.in/musicolet/
| thesuitonym wrote:
| I haven't heard of any spyware or advertising Winamp. It
| doesn't have very good lyrics support (maybe not any?) out of
| the box, but there are tons of plugins.
| geenew wrote:
| There's always mpg123
| leokennis wrote:
| "Half-broken" can be discussed, but Apple Music has fantastic
| lyrics support ^1, with timed lyrics for a large part of the
| library. Even with nice visual indicators on intro's and
| bridges etc. where you can visually see how close you are to
| lyrics starting again by three dots slowly filling up.
|
| ^1 Example:
| https://www.maketecheasier.com/assets/uploads/2020/03/Apple-...
| zuno wrote:
| Its been a long while since I used EvilLyrics:
| http://www.evillabs.sk/evillyrics/
| ZYinMD wrote:
| I use Foobar2000 with OpenLyrics and it's been great.
| hashhar wrote:
| If you have files which have lyrics already embedded I believe
| BlackPlayer does a pretty good job (and it's a very awesome and
| well customisable music player in and of itself).
| severak_cz wrote:
| foobar2000 works great for my local mp3 collection on two
| different windows machines.
|
| It's even possible to use it as a source for internet radio
| stream using some other software (butt & voicemeter) and lot of
| black magic.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Examples of support say mostly Ubuntu 2014. Surely something is
| different now? Wondering too abt. MPV.
| jjice wrote:
| I was thinking about this a bit over a year ago while automating
| ID3 tagging on my library and started thinking about how there's
| no standardized lyrics in music. I was using ID3v1, which I think
| explains my issue, but I guess it still wouldn't have helped
| since I've never seen the option in a player or anything.
|
| It's a real shame the industry didn't treat lyrics in a song file
| as important as subtitles in a movie.
|
| Mini rant: back when I was in high school (I'm a college graduate
| now, for context on how long it's been), Spotify had a lyric
| feature that was good enough. It was out of sync a lot, but
| pretty alright. One day, the button to display lyrics started
| saying that they were working on the feature and it would be back
| soon. Then, in the near future, they just removed the button.
| They added it back for a good chunk of popular songs a few months
| ago probably. It works pretty alright, but it's a shame I have to
| use a proprietary service, and it wasn't a priority for the
| biggest music streaming service to have the lyrics to a song.
|
| In reality, not a big deal, just annoyed by it.
|
| It's a real shame that I haven't even seen lyrics in music I
| purchase on Bandcamp.
| bombcar wrote:
| Subtitles are actually a _legal_ requirement for TV:
| https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/closed-captioning-telev...
| and I assume DVDs, etc descend from that.
|
| Such a legal requirement has never been implemented for _audio_
| files, but it would be nice to see something, though I 'm not
| sure how easy it would be to argue it as a accessibility issue
| - it's easy to see how someone who is deaf/hard of hearing can
| watch a show with subtitles, but do they "listen" to music?
| Isn't music without sound just poetry?
| jjice wrote:
| That makes sense, since a friend of mine would always have to
| make subtitles for her student films. I believe there was
| also a lawsuit over some MIT lecture recordings that were
| available publicly but didn't have subtitles a little while
| back. I wonder how that turned out.
| bombcar wrote:
| I've noticed when uploading to Youtube it will ask some
| questions about subtitling - and one of the options is
| "never on broadcast TV in the USA".
| spijdar wrote:
| It's worth pointing out some songs intentionally don't have
| "authoritative lyrics", and some musicians leave the lyrics
| open to interpretation, or mix in phonetic gibberish intended
| to sound like words but with no clear meaning.
|
| It's probably linked to why both there are no accessibility
| requirements for lyrics and they're not widespread in audio
| formats, that (some) musicians would see it as removing a
| dimension from their art.
|
| (Although the same argument could be applied to movies, where
| a difficult to hear conversation could be "artistic
| expression", so I don't know where the line is drawn. FWIW,
| I'm the sort of person to watch movies with subtitles enabled
| even though my hearing is fine, and I prefer knowing the
| lyrics to music)
|
| Edit: unrelated to lyrics, but I wonder if people with
| hearing impairment or complete lack of hearing listen to
| music for the sensation. With the right environment, you
| could physically experience at least some types of music, as
| vibrations on the skin. With frequency shifting this could
| probably be optimized...
| bombcar wrote:
| Supposedly Beethoven's music is noticeably different as he
| began to go deaf later in life (I've heard stories that he
| had a piano with the legs removed so he could feel the
| vibrations through the floor).
|
| There is a "definitive" question that often cannot be
| answered; similar to over-analyzing anything - just trying
| to "say" what the word is may not be desirable or possible.
|
| And subtitling itself is an art I feel, you can really tell
| the cheap vs well done ones. And it's interesting to see
| how things are clarified (and lost) sometimes; we do the
| same where we always have the subtitles on.
|
| I've always felt there's room for jokes that nobody will
| see unless they have subtitles on, for example, imagine a
| standard high-school comedy, the nerdy kid is going to
| school and the happy music is playing and the subtitle says
| [UPBEAT MUSIC] - but suddenly the music turns darker and
| the subtitle changes to [BEATUP MUSIC].
| jjice wrote:
| > I wonder if people with hearing impairment or complete
| lack of hearing listen to music for the sensation
|
| I went to a university that has a relatively high deaf and
| hard of hearing population (probably near 5%), and one
| thing that was common was that those students would like
| bass heavy music, since you can kind of feel the song/beat.
| We'd have concerts on campus and have an interpreter on
| stage signing the lyrics of the song, and deaf students
| would often gather closer to the sub woofers.
| m-p-3 wrote:
| Sadly the ability to show lyrics on musical files isn't as
| "standardized" as on video files. The MKV container is great for
| that, with the ability to add subtitle files as additional data
| streams, and most players are able to handle it. I wish the FLAC
| format would actually decide on an actual tagging standard for
| synced and unsynced lyrics data.
|
| It's probably because the use of lyrics file is too much of a
| niche compared to video subs.
| bombcar wrote:
| Does the MKV container work without a video track? Is there any
| player that can handle "using" MKV for audio files?
| Isthatablackgsd wrote:
| Yea they can, MKV is just a container. If you open up MKV
| container via MKVToolNix, Handbrake or MediaInfo, you will
| see various formats in there. Though, not all audio/music
| players have a support for MKV and its variant.
| alternatetwo wrote:
| Typically you'd name the extension ".mka" then. Any
| reasonably modern player using ffmpeg libraries for decoding
| should be able to deal with them fine.
|
| Fun fact: There's also ".mks" for only including subs.
| bombcar wrote:
| https://www.matroska.org/technical/codec_specs.html - it
| seems that .mka would be perfect, it supports all codecs
| basically, and so you can losslessly move audio into the
| container and back out if needed.
|
| You still need players that would understand how to display
| subtitles for a .mka container.
| hatsuseno wrote:
| I've had no issues using either mplayer on *nix, or foobar2k
| on windows for audio-only MKV.
| m-p-3 wrote:
| Probably, I know I could create an MKV file with only Blu-Ray
| subtitle tracks (I archive the original when ripping my own
| stuff) and it was actually stored as a MKS. So I assume the
| same can be done with audio.
| pestatije wrote:
| > "ogg/vorbis is a patent-free audio codec and thus my preferred
| choice over mp3."
|
| mp3 is patent-free as well, as far as i know.
| yyyk wrote:
| According to archive.org, this page was written in 2016 or
| earlier (their earliest entry is for dec. 2016). The mp3
| patents expired in 2017, so at the time it was not patent-free.
| pestatije wrote:
| On the right-hand menu:
|
| > "July 26, 2016 updated April 8, 2021"
|
| Seems to be about this specific article.
| ksec wrote:
| AAC-LC is also patent-free now. Same support as MP3 across
| devices while providing much better quality.
| sandreas wrote:
| If someone is looking for a possibility to do this with C#, I can
| recommend atl.net [1] library. Currently I am working on a
| tagging command line tool called `tone` that utilizes the library
| to do awesome stuff :-)
|
| The lib supports: - default tags (id3 v2.3, v2.4,
| APEtag 1.0-2.0, m4a, ogg) - chapters - lyrics -
| custom tags
|
| for the most modern audio formats.
|
| https://github.com/Zeugma440/atldotnet
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-03-08 23:01 UTC)