LyricVault
Brent D. Payne, CEO/Founder of Lyric Vault, posted February 2, 2006 to a newsgroup in response to a question about how lyrics sites usually populate their databases. In his explanation he also talked about the lyrics sites crackdown, and reminded people that even though the MPA had made threats, no one has been sued yet.
The part that interests me is where he says that he’s had some luck in communicating with music publishers.
The good news though is that the publishers are co-operative with any the smallest of web sites such as http://www.lyricvault.com and if you have the right attitude a call to most of the major publishers will gain you a great response.
Also of interest to me is where Payne wrote:
I recently had an article published by the press that got the attention of a lot of the music publishers
Is this the one he’s talking about? Don’t Sue Me, Just Pick Up The Phone by Jason Lee Miller, published 2005-12-22. It has quotes from Payne, so maybe that’s the one he meant.
Brent D. Payne said,
February 11, 2006 @ 5:42 am
Hmm, amazing what a web log will tell you about people linking into your site. I had no clue this page existed until I checked the log.
First off, thanks for posting and for linking to the Lyric Vault site.
Some additional comments, I am currently in the middle of negotiations with a handful of publishers and the publishers are being quite reasonable so far. I hope this trend continues. Sure it did take an article to get their attention (and yes it was the article Don’t Sue Me, Just Pick Up the Phone by Jason Lee Miller) but they are responding well. I am very excited about developing a proper relationship with the publishers. It should also be noted that one of the publishers I am speaking to is interested in licensing not only lyrics but tabs as well (though I am not particularly interested in the tabs at this point–still reserving the right to change my mind though). I know the publishers may seem like the big bad wolf, however as frustrated as I get with their slow responses I do feel–at this point–they have proper intentions of allowing the lyrics to remain on the internet as long as they receive the proper royalties.
I am fighting an uphill battle on two fronts. On the publishing side I am a small site in a very large music industry. This creates an obstacle because getting multimillion dollar publishing companies to respond to my requests is challenging. Furthermore, other than LyricFind.com paving a small path with one or two publishers, I am asking these sites to change a number of business practices in order to scale properly. On the other front, I am trying to gain relevancy with the search engines on terms that are very popular. Google definitely favors the current players in the market such as Lyrics.com, azlyrics.com, and sing365.com. As a matter of fact, I have yet to be even indexed by Google (see some other forums regarding my frustration regarding Google). Yet I continue to pour massive amounts of my personal income (completely self-funded at this point) into http://www.lyricvault.com to complete the site with the hope that users will see the significant difference between Lyric Vault and the other lyric sites. You can say I am a lone soldier right now as I refuse to partner with the other lyric sites (as the reason for my creation of Lyric Vault is due to my annoyance with the pop-ups, adware, and irrelevant banner ads on the other lyric sites) and prefer to work directly with the publishers in order to save as many pennies as possible. Again, my site will not be as profitable as the other popular lyric sites as I refuse to allow pop-ups and other intrusive marketing campaigns.
I simply hope that in this instance the good guy doesn’t finish last, as I am striving very hard to do the right thing in all aspects of the Lyric Vault site, but as of yet have reaped nothing but a $20K debt and a drive to succeed that I haven’t seen since I launched the http://viking.amazon.com site with Amazon for Viking Components over 5 years ago. It is nice to see my drive for success back, just wish that a paycheck of some sort came with it. ;-)
Please, take a look at the Lyric Vault site. I feel you will see it is best of breed, but if you disagree please take the time to email me what you do not like about the site. I have made dozens of improvements since I launched the site in Q4 of 2005 and will continue to improve the site for its users.
Again, thanks for this post.
Sincerely,
Brent D. Payne
CEO/Founder
Lyric Vault
http://www.lyricvault.com
keith said,
February 11, 2006 @ 2:52 pm
Brent,
Thanks for leaving a comment. It’s nice when information finds me (people leaving informative comments, as opposed to me having to seek information).
I’m interested in a couple things you said.
Since you’re in the process of negotiating with publishers, things can go well, and things can go wrong. Either way, I hope you’ll be sharing that information. Don’t be bullied into non-disclosure agreements.
The other thing is your site not being listed in Google. I don’t know much about search engine optimization (SEO), but I do know that Google should at least recognize your site if there’s even one inbound link that it’s crawled. Unless of course you did something to breach their policies. I saw some of your comments around the net, such as a blog and a newsgroup, but that didn’t really give me much information. Here are my thoughts.
Did you do anything deceptive, such as cloaking? BMW Germany was delisted recently because of this.
Did you recently change your robots.txt file lately? I used the SearchEngineWorld robots.txt validator on it, and it found a couple duplicate entries, stating It is unknown how spiders will react to duplicates.
Back on the original topic of dealing with publishers. I hope your efforts pay off. My first impression of your site is that it’s got a lot going for it. Good luck.
Brent D. Payne said,
February 12, 2006 @ 7:28 am
I feel at this point my biggest problem with Google is that the previous owner of Lyric Vault did some pretty crazy things. I have been getting a lot of feedback regarding his misguided practices and there are still links into my site from p0rnigraph1c sites (sorry didn’t want the keyword associated with this page) and that doesn’t help. I am trying to get the sites to remove the links but it is not real successful thus far.
As for my practices, I have been as clean as a whistle. I don’t use link farms, I don’t exchange links, and I don’t use hidden text, gateway pages, or any of that other deceptive stuff. I simply feel that the name I chose may be very well my biggest downfall at this point. (Feel like a scene from Romeo & Juliet, j/k.)
If you or anyone else can provide me with feedback as to how I can notify Google that the previous owner was not me and get a clean slate with Google it would be really appreciated.
Thanks again,
Brent D. Payne
CEO/Founder
Lyric Vault
keith said,
February 15, 2006 @ 1:26 am
Brent,
Refer to Matt Cutts’ blog (he’s an employee of Google), where he posts how to go about being reincluded in their search results.
Side note: Don’t be confused by the similar layout between my site and his - we’re not affiliated. We simply use the same template (at the moment) - Almost Spring.
Brent D. Payne said,
February 16, 2006 @ 4:18 am
Keith,
As of today, February 15th, 2006 I have finally been indexed on 127 pages of the Lyric Vault site. While my rankings on such terms as Nickelback All the Right Reasons lyrics is no where near the first results page, it is at least a start.
I did do the reinclusion request as you mentioned (did it a few days ago) and that seemed to have solved the problem.
P.S. There is quite a bit of heat in the kitchen in one of the newsgroups right now. LOL