LyricMaster is one of the most popular, community-developed add-ons for Songbird, and a few weeks ago, it started spewing gibberish. The community code contributors who built and maintained the add-on in the past had moved on. We attempted to keep it running and contacted the lyrics provider to get their support, but were unable to get a response. So last Friday, with the vast majority of our users experiencing a broken add-on, we turned it off. And we were sad.
Out of the ashes, several community members stepped up and provided patches to keep it working. In addition, they expressed interest in continuing development of the add-on. We are optimistic that they will be able to work with a lyrics provider to help the lyrics add-on sing again.
LyricsMaster will be retired so that it can live a happy life playing shuffle board and bingo, and a new lyrics add-on will be published. When the community members have the new add-on to share in a day or two, it will be uploaded to the add-on site and we will update this blog post with the new name. Users should uninstall the blocked LyricMaster add-on, and manually install the new one.
Thanks to everyone who has waited patiently for a fix and to the community members who will help lyrics fly higher and higher!
Update (Oct 6) – the new lyrics add-on MLyrics is now up and available for download! It should look familiar since it uses the same code base as LyricMaster but the lyrics sources have been updated and there are several other big improvements to come. Huzzah!
36 Comments
SubscribeLooking forward to a new better, working add-on!
This add-on is actually the main reason I use Songbird still.
Great! The thing i like the most about songbird was lyricmaster, and when it was down it was like “oh no!”, hope a fix is back soon =).
The other problem you have to solve yet though is last fm plugin….it has been months since it started sucking…
Will uninstalling the current LyricsMaster add-on delete all the lyrics we had previously saved?
Terrible decision to turn it off. OK, fine, new lyrics couldn’t be retrieved with reliability. But turning it off entirely meant being unable to access existing lyrics we already had saved. And from that perspective, it was not broken!
Having no ability to choose to use it and being forced to disable it is terrible. Fine, warn me, and on my own head be it. Warn me every time I start up if it matters. But choice for a user is a good thing, especially when its not dangerous just not performing up to par. Some of its functionality was still working quite happily.
If it weren’t for the fact that Lyric support on other players is absolutely woeful, this would’ve been enough for me to jump ship. It is the only reason I use this player.
Attaboy!
Songbird it’s not the same since ~1year ago… I thought it will be the Firefox of audio players but it isn’t. It wasn’t a good audio player but I used it as a default player hopping improvements in the future, but the last improvements sucks, like the video capability (almost when there are other priorities making the audio player agile and complete).
It’s a very wrong order of doing things, guys. You should come up with a replacement addon FIRST, and then block the old one. I’m guessing that if it wasn’t for the shitstorm on GetSatisfaction, you’d be still blissfully unaware of how your bold move affected the community.
Being sad is hardly a good excuse. Why didn’t you inform the community about that decision first? Heavy-handed approach will never work in communities, I just hope you’ve learnt your lesson well.
@all
Songbird seem to be in a better shape now to become what you were expecting it to be. This year was apparently needed to secure the company’s viability by finding paying partners (and working for them before working for the community, which makes sense) .
By testing the latests builds of SB 1.9 and by reading the latest posts about performance, you may already know that us, community, have been heard and for instance, good response times are back.
My only real issue is the fact that many of the add ons developers were working with Linux and have felt kind of “betrayed” when SB stopped supporting Linux *officially*. That is why some of the best add-ons are abandoned for the moment.
And I wish all the best to the Nightingale project, because it will be good far all, Linux and non-Linux user.
My 2cts
Just go here and get it working again, took all of 2 minutes
http://jonesandrewd.webs.com/lyricsmaster.html
Just make sure you set the autosave facility to ask, so you can decide if you want to save the lyrics or not. The lyrics are about 80% OK which is good enough for me
It was annoying, yes. And LyricsMaster is/was my favorite add-on. And yes again, in my opinion it shouldn’t have been blocked. But give the guys a break. It’s been gone less than a week and now a solution is well under way.
On the other hand, it’s good that some people get worked up because it tends to speed up the process, and that’s probably the reason a fix is coming so soon (yes I think it’s soon). But still, let’s be civil and don’t overdo your whining, it may have the opposite effect.
Great! I’m glad to hear about the planned improvements and fixes. I do hope that they don’t only remain plans on paper.
Do let us users know on getsatisfaction when the new LyricMaster is out. We are waiting eagerly!
@Kevin
What audio format are your tracks using? In general, no, uninstalling the LyricMaster add-on won’t go through and wipe out the lyrics metadata that were saved to your tracks. For example, if your files are MP3s, you should be fine but if they’re in another format, we can better confirm.
best plugin ever!
Dunno what you’ve done to the display font in MLyrics… but it definitely not an improvement compared to LyricMaster.
best news since a long time. this is the most factor for me to use songbird.
for this reason i love songbird all over the world.!
I´m using songbird on linux and there is no other player who can download automatically and display the lyrics in this way.
i think the same reason on other platforms like windows.
lyricsmaster was in the last time very broken. for me it downloaded on correct named songs, lyrics which are in no way the correct.
(german songs and every time it downloaded unknown englisch lyrics.
i hope this is now fixed. i will test it today evening
Could you please include Darklyrics.com, it’s a simple HTML website that specializes in heavy metal lyrics (which many other sites often are deficient in, lacking more obscure songs or bands)?
Love MLyrics so far, thanks.
Hey everyone! The new MLyrics add-on has been a big hit, and all of the feedback from the praise to bug reports to general questions has been awesome. I’d highly recommend that folks continue to use the MLyrics add-on comment thread for feedback (even if it means double-posting) since the developer is actively watching and responding over there.
Also, please keep in mind that MLyrics was promptly published to take into account response time over new features. Other than the lyrics sources, things should behave pretty much similar to the previous LyricMaster add-on and there are plans for some great, new features to be added over time. If anyone with development chops wants to join the MLyrics development effort or provide patches to get new features and bug fixes published quicker, contact the developer on the add-on comment thread. Now’s the time to be heard!
Yay, well done. Didn’t think you would do it. so thanks!
Songbird was developed for me personally, I know it was ! and I love it, This player has everything I need for a perfect listening experience, great apps, and a browser, marvelous. How did I put up with wmp and all the other while I waited for you to develop this for me. I want it to be a major player. I want to see it on every radio station website in the world as a player option. Then it will have it’s rightful, deserved place in the world community.
I know the above is a serious discussion! but where else / how else can I tell you that I love you…Miles of Smiles
@HigherHeels
VERY nice and thoughtful post. I agree.
@Daniel + kyods:
The old plug-in was not broken, indeed – it was a problem with the lyrics provider. They had been intentionally delivering wrong lyrics for Songbird users. On my machine (and a lot of others had the same problem) existing lyrics had been overwritten with random lyrics! I had to rebuild my whole library from my backup. I think blocking the plug-in was the only way to stop this disaster!
Just want to tell you guys i’ve just started using songbird, and it’s incredibly good! Thanks so much for making it.
Aw, this was a really quality post. In theory I’d like to write like this too -
I was just started using songbird and really yet don`t know how it good can be, but i still checking….
I am a bit nostalgic about Songmaster. Do we all have to migrate to MLyrics?
Great. Very nice post.
@ben
Thanks for the feedback! Unfortunately, at this point in time, LyricMaster (I think that’s what you meant instead of Songmaster) has ridden off into the sunset. You should probably move onto MLyrics if you want to continue getting song lyrics unless you’ve hacked LyricMaster to work for you. If LyricMaster is up and running for you, then there’s no need to change but just keep in mind that there’s no more active development on it and it will stop working when upgrading Songbird. If there’s something missing in MLyrics that you’d like to see (a LyricMaster nostalgic mode?), then go ahead and toss it on the MLyrics add-on comment thread so the developer gets your input.
I need help.
Songbird took some of my pictures off of my Flash Drvie.
How do I get them back?
Don´t find any add-on named MLyrics? Only a “feathered” version. What can i do to get this add-on working?
Help would be appreciated
Hi guys,
tried to install MLyrics a few mins ago… and I ran into the same brick wall as Brok did: While trying “http://addons.songbirdnest.com/addon/1920″ I get “Add-on Not Found”.
There is a feathered version of MLyrics for use with the “delicous”-feather (Mac-only :-/ ), but no trace whatsoever of the original thing. Link broken?
Any help will be most welcome.
Regards,
Dave
I’e met the same problem today, did you find an answer, for not found error. But it looks that will be very nice to see, thanks for add-on.
Mlyrics is back: http://addons.songbirdnest.com/addon/1928
Heya folks, we had a slight hiccup with the MLyrics add-on and as katana346 mentioned above already, the add-on has moved pages. I’ve updated the link in the blog post and be rest assured that the current version of the add-on is the same as the most recent version of the add-on previously available.
Thanks!
@KaizerKid
Oh noes! If you haven’t already, I’d recommend that you seek out assistance in our GetSatisfaction forum at http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird. First, search to see if anyone else has seen similar issues and then if not, go ahead and post a new problem report. Hopefully a Songbird employee or another community member can help you out. Good luck!
@Pjople
Thank you very much *Bows*
I’m afraid I have to agree with Dimas.
It had been some time since I last played around with Songbird. Looked good (for a Linux), and Liked it in principle, but it needed a good deal of work.
So, I was switching a friend of mine over to Linux Mint 10 here recently (got sick of supporting his crufty Vista installation), and thought “oh, yeah, Songbird. Must be much better by now. He’ll like it.” Looked into it again, and learned of the Linux support fiasco. So, that was out.
But I thought I would check it out on my Win7 installation, even though it seemed odd that an iTunes replacement was only being supported or platforms on which iTunes runs. Figured dropping Linux support must have accelerated development.
Disappointed. Thought it would have come a lot farther along.
There’s not a nice way to put it, I suppose: I don’t see the point of Songbird. Doesn’t seem to have any coherent purpose.