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I’ve supported myself for the past decade with my side project
- yvoschaap2 9y agoHi, OP here. Happy to answer any specific question...
- pmoriarty 9y agoHave you ever studied what your competition is doing wrong and why you've managed to stay ahead of them for so long?
- bballer 9y agoWhere did the initial seeding of all the lyrics & bands come from? Also, are most of the new lyrics contributed by users and if so how do you handle authenticating that the lyrics provided are accurate?
- yvoschaap2 9y agoMy license provider has a database of over 1.2M lyrics. But matter of fact is that Directlyrics hosts only around 10k. A decision made early on to focus on less pages compared to competitors that needed to rank 1M+ paghes.
- CM30 9y agoSo where did the lyrics come from when you started the site? Did you type them out yourself, take from some other site in the same niche, etc?
- bshimmin 9y agoWhy does https://www.directlyrics.com https://www.directlyrics.com have a TITLE of "Azlyrics" and an H1 of "Azlyrics" but http://www.azlyrics.com http://www.azlyrics.com seems to be an entirely unrelated web site? The latter is typically what I end up at when I search for song lyrics if I click one of the first few links (though if I want to read some amusing analysis, usually there is a Genius.com link a few below).
- yvoschaap2 9y agoYes, good eye. A great example of continuious testing SEO opportunities. What if Google would start ranking directlyrics on specific 'azlyrics' queries? I haven't seen it happen yet, but if it worked... expect it to be reverted next week.
- bshimmin 9y agoRight, so you're using one of your competitors' names quite prominently on your own site? And, er, you think that's ok?
- logfromblammo 9y agoIt's AZLyrics's responsibility to police their own trademarks, so it's okay, unless they say it is not in a C&D letter. So it's legally okay, as far as we know. Still a dick move, though. It's not okay in my opinion. But I'm not the one who may gain or lose thousands of dollars by deciding whether or not to do it, either. I can't say for certain whether it would be okay or not from outside my comfy judgment armchair.
- ScottBurson 9y agoIt's blatant, intentional trademark infringement for direct commercial gain. IANAL, but I would think this might result in something quite a bit more expensive than a C&D -- like a lawsuit with punitive damages. ETA: and now the site owner is on record here on HN stating that the intent was to steal search traffic. I'm sure this is a cutthroat business ... but this is an open invitation for one's own throat to be cut.
- yvoschaap2 9y agoSo many lawyers here on HN, I forgot...
- 9y ago
- theprotocol 9y agoHow has the advent of ad blockers affected your revenue stream?
- yvoschaap2 9y agoI never measured that. But the numbers I deal with are so large, that even after blocking the number of ad impressions are still huge. The biggest revenue hit was the decline of ringtone revenue.
- marsrover 9y agoI'd be curious to see some month to month (or year to year) financial charts.
- yvoschaap2 9y agoIt's actually pretty aligned with the traffic graph shown. Exceptions are months (e.g. around Christmas) where my advertising partner would be able to attract up to 3x revenue from the same amount of traffic as the month before.
- empath75 9y agoI feel like starting a business with a massive theft of other people's intellectual property isn't a great model to follow.
- reallydattrue 9y agoReally? What about SciHub? From what I understand, they are selling pirated papers. But yet everyone in [0] is ranting and raving about how awesome it is. Oh HN how fickle you are. Piracy when it suits you. A-OK. When it doesn't, the pitch forks come out. No surprise here. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14868033 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14868033
- sputknick 9y agoSerious question: is this theft of IP? I know if a songwriter writes a song, you need to license it in order to perform it for profit, but are the actual lyrics intellectual property?
- Isamu 9y agoExcerpt from https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ50.pdf https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ50.pdf : "The copyright law of the United States provides for copyright protection in “musical works, including any accompanying words,” that are fixed in some tangible medium of expression. 17 U.S.C. §102(a)(2). Musical works include both original compositions and original arrangements or other new versions of earlier compositions to which new copyrightable authorship has been added. "The owner of copyright in a work has the exclusive right to make copies, to prepare derivative works, to sell or distribute copies, and to perform the work publicly. Anyone else wishing to use the work in these ways must have the permission of the author or someone who has derived rights through the author. note: Copyright in a musical work includes the right to make and distribute the first sound recording. Although others are permitted to make subsequent sound recordings, they must compensate the copyright owner of the musical work under the compulsory licensing provision of the law (17 U.S.C. §115). For more information, see Circular 73, Compulsory License for Making and Distributing Phonorecords. "Copyright Protection Is Automatic "Under the present copyright law, which became effective January 1, 1978, a work is automatically protected by copyright when it is created. A work is created when it is “fixed” or embodied in a copy or phonorecord for the first time. Neither registration in the Copyright Office nor publication is required for copyright protection under the law.
- trevyn 9y agoThe transition from unlicensed to licensed seems like a big step. Did the publishers just reach out and ask you to pay a fee?
- yvoschaap2 9y agoSo back in 2010 the first law suit started against lyrics sites: > http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/california/cacdce/2:2009cv06160/452250/219/ http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/californ... It was pretty clear that others would be next. Hence unlicensed wouldn't be maintainable. Next to that, I wanted to sell advertising to big brands. My advertising partner insisted we needed to be licensed for the Coca Cola's of this world to spend money on my traffic. So for me it was an opportunity to increase revenue, at the costs of lower profit margin.
- godot 9y agoI think the commenter's question was more about _how_ you did it :) (Thanks for answering questions here btw) Did publishers just reach out to say "hey, pay this fee"? Or did they straight up start with lawsuits/C&D? Or did you reach out to them and say "hey I got this site, how much do I pay you to become licensed?"
- yvoschaap2 9y agoSo I went out and found licensing pro-actively. I wasn't contacted before in a formal way. But I know they (NMPA) did sent C&D letters to over 40 domains eventually.
- reallynice 9y agoThat's a lot of content to get licensed. You have to individually negotiate with every band and artist to get the license for their lyrics?
- logfromblammo 9y agoUnlikely. First you go to ASCAP, then all of its competitors. For artists that don't use a rights clearance and royalty processing company to handle that stuff, you might just wait to get a letter from their attorney and offer a reasonable settlement based on the ASCAP rate. Tracking down loose artists on your own initiative just to give them enough money that they won't track you down and sue you seems like an overly honorable use of time and money to coexist with a successful business.
- yalooze 9y agoThere are 3 main record labels (Sony, Universal, and Warner) which own pretty much the entire market. So just 3 contracts to negotiate (or 4 if you include EMI pre 2012).
- hammock 9y agoASCAP and BMI are who you deal with. For small potatoes they have rate cards, making it as easy as pie.
- yvoschaap2 9y agoThere are two companies available who are intermediaries between me (site) and the lyrics publisher (writer) and handle all licensing: - Gracenote (they sold their lyrics licensing to lyricfind) - Lyricfind E.g. Google and Bing also license their lyrics offering through Lyricfind. I only deal with them.
- giarc 9y agoOut of curiosity, is getting the rights to a lyric catalogue a 4 figure, 5 figure, 6 figure deal?
- 9y ago
- ronilan 9y agoGreat story from a great era. And as I was reading this I was humming Springsteen to myself "Glory days, well, they'll pass you by Glory days, in the wink of a young girl's eye Glory days, glory days" Turns out directlyrics doesn't have those lyrics. Google however returned them at top of the search homepage. And... wow! TIL there is a version of this great song with a verse that was not included in the original 80s version. "My old man worked twenty years on the line And they let him go Now everywhere he goes out looking for work They just tell him that he's too old" Here's the video: https://youtu.be/P5-IoEcolp8 https://youtu.be/P5-IoEcolp8 Glory days!
- Subetai 9y agoGreat story. I worked as your competitor with metrolyrics about 5 years ago. It was a lot more interesting than I thought it would be. I think you put the correct amount of effort in, added some value and moved on nicely. Much kudos
- gotrecruit 9y agohow much has rapgenius taken away from you? i know i used to land up in one of many crappy lyrics sites, such as yours, because those seem to be the only places to find them but these days i mostly stick to rapgenius for its clean interface. i imagine rapgenius's rise must have done some damage with their clearly superior technology?
- yvoschaap2 9y agoGenius is killing it. They bring more then just lyrics, and build a community. Something I failed in both. But its always fun to remind them that Justin Bieber & Ed Sheeran are their top traffic sources.
- ghjnut 9y agoIt's also cool that artists will jump on to elaborate on their own lyrics. Here's Eminem talking about his hook in 'Rap God' https://genius.com/2566991 https://genius.com/2566991
- gaadd33 9y agoDo they jump on because of the community, as part of a PR plan, or does Genius pay them?
- sigi45 9y ago"And that’s all there is to it." srsly?
- WalterBright 9y agoI've contracted malware twice from merely clicking on Google search results for lyrics. I never visit lyrics sites anymore.
- Steeeve 9y agoI found one line from that article really funny: > an LA-based company that was run by a self-proclaimed co-founder of MySpace I've met several people in southern california that say they are myspace co-founders. Why on earth is myspace the go-to mark for them?
- inimino 9y agoBig enough for name recognition, but obscure enough that most people don't know offhand who founded it?
- joshuaheard 9y agoRead the whole article waiting to find out how he got the lyrics and was disappointed. An article on a website selling content should at least include the source of the content.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]