Save the Misheard Lyrics Sites
About a month ago, the Music Publishing Association threatened to shut down pearLyrics, a P2P app which hooks you up with lyrics for songs in your iTunes library. Pear pulled the plug after receiving a cease-and-desist letter. The somewhat happy ending is that the stink this incident raised ultimately caused the MPA to apologize to pearLyrics’ Walter Ritter (pearLyrics has nevertheless not returned to availability). Basically the MPA targeted the wrong guy, and they are regrouping to target larger web sites that derive revenue from hosting lyrics illegally. (Article at Billboard.) I wouldn’t miss these sites if they disappeared, because they aren’t hosting the real lyrics anyway. The real lyrics can only be found at sites that mistakenly call them “misheard,” such as Am I Right. I can’t tell what people are singing half the time (make that 31/32 of the time—I was never good at fractions), so as far as I’m concerned, the misheard lyrics are the real ones. Many of them are improvements over the allegedly original ones, that’s for sure. OK, OK, I am easily amused. I’m just hoping the MPA leaves the misheard lyrics sites alone. Now, excuse me while I kiss this guy.