Ole Begemann: iPhone Development

Songtext displaying error message

As of this morning, Songtext is no longer working. LyricWiki, the site Songtext obtained its lyrics from, was required by music publishers to cripple their API in such a way that apps like Songtext no longer have direct access to the lyrics. This effecticely breaks Songtext and many other iPhone lyrics apps that also used LyricWiki as their source.

I am very sorry to all users but at the moment there is nothing I (or LyricWiki) can do about this.

I would like to thank the guys at LyricWiki for their efforts in providing an API in the first place. And special thanks for providing users of Songtext and other apps with a clear error message that should minimize support requests for app developers:

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).

The lyrics for this song can be found at the following URL: …

(Please note: this is not the fault of the developer who created this application, but is a restriction imposed by music publishers themselves.)

I sincerely hope that the music publishers are working on a solution that would allow for the existence of lyrics apps in the future. The popularity of some of these apps clearly shows that there is a demand. Instead of only crippling third-party solutions, they should provide their own APIs (with their own licensing model if they feel they need to be compensated).

Sorry to all folks who are seeing the “Error loading lyrics” message in Songtext at the moment. LyricWiki, the site Songtext gets the lyrics from, is down this Sunday morning. I hope it will be back up soon and I will keep posting updates here.

I apologize that Songtext does not work at the moment but unfortunately there is nothing I can do about it.

Update July 19th, 2009, 16:00 CEST: LyricWiki is back up again after a downtime of about 5 hours. Songtext should be working again. Sorry again to everybody who got only error messages today.