Some while ago, there started this big buzz around the media with the music publishers going to sue the websites which publish music lyrics without any approval or – to be more exact – without paying any copyright fees.

Some actions were taken against software tools which search for lyrics – like pearLyrics - and it seems they had the effect the publishers aimed for, as now websites started buying licenses for publishing the songs lyrics.

Gracenote took one of the first steps in this directions and bought the right to publish the lyrics of around 1 million songs from Bertelsmann AG’s BMG Music Publishing, Vivendi’s Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV Music Publishing and other publishers.

Now, this seems quite stupid to me to charge for publishing the lyrics of the song which is something everybody hears, they are meant to be this way. Plus, knowing the lyrics of a song is, in my opinion, quite likely to make you buy it and maybe the whole album. I myself found out a lot of nice artists and songs just by searching on Google for the lyrics of a song heard on the radio or in

Hopefully it won’t end up with the companies charging money from the user every time you read the lyrics or start humming them in the street.

And I wonder…how much money can you charge for the right to publish the lyrics of this song ? :)