![]() | This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page . (Learn how and when to remove these template messages)
|
Filename extension | .lrc |
---|---|
Magic number | None, formally |
Developed by | None |
Type of format | Timed text |
Container for | Song lyrics (with their timings in the song) |
Open format? | Yes |
Free format? | Yes |
LRC (short for lyrics) is a computer file format that synchronizes song lyrics with an audio file, such as MP3, Vorbis, or MIDI. It allows for compatible players (such as modern digital audio players) to display song lyrics synchronously with a song. The lyrics file generally has the same name as the audio file, just with a different filename extension, and operates as a sidecar file. For example, if a song's main file is song.mp3
, its LRC file would most commonly be song.lrc
. The LRC format is text-based and similar in form to subtitle files.
It was first introduced by Taiwan-based Kuo (Djohan) Shiang-shiang's Lyrics Displayer in 1998, with an accompanying plug-in for Winamp. [1]
The original LRC format (sometimes called the Simple LRC format) is formed of two types of tags (time tags and optional ID tags), with one tag per line. Time tags have the format [mm:ss.xx]lyric
, where mm
is minutes, ss
is seconds, xx
is hundredths of a second, and lyric
is the lyric to be played at that time. A basic example with just time tags is below.
[00:12.00]Line 1 lyrics [00:17.20]Line 2 lyrics [00:21.10][00:45.10]Repeating lyrics (e.g. chorus) ... [mm:ss.xx]Last lyrics line
ID tags may optionally appear before the lyrics, [2] although some players may not recognize or simply ignore this[ citation needed ]. The format of an ID tag is [type:value]
, where type
is the tag type and value
its value (most often some text). The different possible tag types are tabulated below.
Tag type | Tag purpose |
---|---|
ti | Title of the song |
ar | Artist performing the song |
al | Album the song is from |
au | Author of the song |
length | Length of the song (mm:ss ) |
by | Author of the LRC file (not the song) |
offset | Specifies a global offset value for the lyric times, in milliseconds. The value is prefixed with either + or - , with + causing lyrics to appear sooner |
re /tool | The player or editor that created the LRC file |
ve | The version of the program |
# | Comments |
A more comprehensive example with both ID and time tags is given below.
[ar:Chubby Checker oppure Beatles, The] [al:Hits Of The 60's - Vol. 2 – Oldies] [ti:Let's Twist Again] [au:Written by Kal Mann / Dave Appell, 1961] [length: 2:23] [00:12.00]Naku Penda Piya-Naku Taka Piya-Mpenziwe [00:15.30]Some more lyrics ... ...
Several extensions to the format have been created to introduce new functionality.
The Walaoke extension, available only in Walaoke from Walasoft, allows the specification of parts for a male-female duet. This is done through the use of M:
, F:
, and D:
at the start of a line for male, female, and duet lines respectively. This allows them to be displayed in different colours. This is illustrated with an example below.
[00:12.00]Line 1 lyrics [00:17.20]F: Line 2 lyrics [00:21.10]M: Line 3 lyrics [00:24.00]Line 4 lyrics [00:28.25]D: Line 5 lyrics [00:29.02]Line 6 lyrics
Using blue for male, red for female, and pink for duet, the lines will have the following colours:
The A2 extension to the LRC format (also called the Enhanced LRC format) was introduced by the A2 Media Player, and adds the ability to specify the time individual words are sung. These word time tags are identical to the standard line time tags, but use angle brackets instead of square ones (i.e. <mm:ss.xx>
). This allows the player to highlight each word when it needs to be sung, for example. An example is given below.
[ti: Somebody to Love] [ar: Jefferson Airplane] [al: Surrealistic Pillow] [lr: Lyricists of that song] [length: 2:58] [00:00.00] <00:00.04> When <00:00.16> the <00:00.82> truth <00:01.29> is <00:01.63> found <00:03.09> to <00:03.37> be <00:05.92> lies [00:06.47] <00:07.67> And <00:07.94> all <00:08.36> the <00:08.63> joy <00:10.28> within <00:10.53> you <00:13.09> dies [00:13.34] <00:14.32> Don't <00:14.73> you <00:15.14> want <00:15.57> somebody <00:16.09> to <00:16.46> love
Karaoke is a type of interactive entertainment system usually offered in clubs and bars, where people sing along to pre-recorded accompaniment using a microphone.
Media player software is a type of application software for playing multimedia computer files like audio and video files. Media players commonly display standard media control icons known from physical devices such as tape recorders and CD players, such as play, pause, fastforward (⏩️), rewind (⏪), and stop buttons. In addition, they generally have progress bars, which are sliders to locate the current position in the duration of the media file.
Rhythmbox is a free and open-source audio player software, tag editor and music organizer for digital audio files on Linux and Unix-like systems.
The Nokia 6230 is a mobile phone based on the Nokia Series 40 platform. It was announced on 28 October 2003 and released in February 2004.
The Nokia 5510 is a mobile phone announced on October 11, 2001 and released in December of that year. The Nokia 5510 features a full QWERTY keyboard, an 84 x 48 monochrome display, and is notable for its digital music player, the company's first mobile phone with music player capabilities. It has a 64 MB memory for storing audio files. It's taco shaped phone like its successor Nokia 3300.
M3U is a computer file format for a multimedia playlist. One common use of the M3U file format is creating a single-entry playlist file pointing to a stream on the Internet. The created file provides easy access to that stream and is often used in downloads from a website, for emailing, and for listening to Internet radio.
High-Efficiency Advanced Audio Coding (HE-AAC) is an audio coding format for lossy data compression of digital audio defined as an MPEG-4 Audio profile in ISO/IEC 14496–3. It is an extension of Low Complexity AAC (AAC-LC) optimized for low-bitrate applications such as streaming audio. The usage profile HE-AAC v1 uses spectral band replication (SBR) to enhance the modified discrete cosine transform (MDCT) compression efficiency in the frequency domain. The usage profile HE-AAC v2 couples SBR with Parametric Stereo (PS) to further enhance the compression efficiency of stereo signals.
Maemo is a software platform originally developed by Nokia, now developed by the community, for smartphones and Internet tablets. The platform comprises both the Maemo operating system and SDK. Maemo played a key role in Nokia's strategy to compete with Apple and Android, but ultimately failed to surpass both companies.Maemo is mostly based on open-source code and has been developed by Maemo Devices within Nokia in collaboration with many open-source projects such as the Linux kernel, Debian, and GNOME. Maemo is based on Debian and draws much of its GUI, frameworks, and libraries from the GNOME project. It uses the Matchbox window manager and the GTK-based Hildon framework as its GUI and application framework.
Flash Video is a container file format used to deliver digital video content over the Internet using Adobe Flash Player version 6 and newer. Flash Video content may also be embedded within SWF files. There are two different Flash Video file formats: FLV and F4V. The audio and video data within FLV files are encoded in the same way as SWF files. The F4V file format is based on the ISO base media file format, starting with Flash Player 9 update 3. Both formats are supported in Adobe Flash Player and developed by Adobe Systems. FLV was originally developed by Macromedia. In the early 2000s, Flash Video was the de facto standard for web-based streaming video. Users include Hulu, VEVO, Yahoo! Video, metacafe, Reuters.com, and many other news providers.
UltraStar is a clone of SingStar, a music video game by Polish developer Patryk "Covus5" Cebula. UltraStar lets one or several players score points by singing along to a song or music video and match the pitch of the original song. UltraStar displays lyrics as well as the correct notes similar to a piano roll. On top of the correct notes UltraStar displays the pitch recorded from the players. UltraStar allows several people to play simultaneously by connecting several microphones possibly to several sound cards. To add a song to UltraStar, a file with notes and lyrics is required, together with an audio file. Optionally a cover image, a backdrop image and a video may be added to each song. UltraStar comes preloaded with a short sample from Nine Inch Nails hit "Discipline" from The Slip album.
Gracenote, Inc. is a company and service that provides music, video, and sports metadata and automatic content recognition (ACR) technologies to entertainment services and companies worldwide. Formerly CDDB, Gracenote maintains and licenses an Internet-accessible database containing information about the contents of audio compact discs and vinyl records. From 2008 to 2014, it was owned by Sony, later sold to Tribune Media, and has been owned since 2017 by Nielsen Holdings. In 2019, Nielsen Holdings announced plans to split into two separate publicly traded companies, Nielsen Global Connect and Nielsen Global Media. In October 2022, Nielsen Holdings completed the sale of Global Media, including the Gracenote subsidiary, to a private equity consortium.
The Nokia N900 is a smartphone made by Nokia. It supersedes the Nokia N810. Its default operating system, Maemo 5, is a Linux-based OS originally developed for the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. It is the first Nokia device based upon the Texas Instruments OMAP3 microprocessor with the ARM Cortex-A8 core. Unlike the three Nokia Internet tablets preceding it, the Nokia N900 is the first Maemo device to include phone functionality.
The following comparison of audio players compares general and technical information for a number of software media player programs. For the purpose of this comparison, "audio players" are defined as any media player explicitly designed to play audio files, with limited or no support for video playback. Multi-media players designed for video playback, which can also play music, are included under comparison of video player software.
JetAudio is a shareware media player application for Microsoft Windows and Android released in 1997, that offers playback options for a wide range of multimedia file formats.
TuneWiki was a music-centered startup that provides scrolling lyrics through its social music players for cellphones and handheld devices. With over 6 million lyrics and the world's largest scrolling lyrics library, TuneWiki had agreements with the major music publishers including Sony, Universal, and EMI to legally use synchronized lyrics in TuneWiki's music applications. Furthermore, the mobile TuneWiki applications also used to provide lyrics for streaming radio on mobile phones, and TuneWiki has location-based technology to let users see where their favorite music is being played around the world. Users follow other users to discover music and discuss the music they listen to.
MusicBee is a freeware media player for playback and organization of audio files on Microsoft Windows, built using the BASS audio library.
Musixmatch is an Italian music data company and platform for users to search and share song lyrics with translations. Musixmatch has 80 million users, 8 million songs with their respective lyrics, and 115+ employees.
The Nokia Nseries was a high-end lineup of feature phones, smartphones, and tablets marketed by Nokia Corporation from 2005 to 2011. The Nseries devices commonly supported multiple high-speed wireless technologies at the time, such as 3G, or Wireless LAN. Digital multimedia services, such as music playback, photo/video capture or viewing, gaming or internet services were the central focus of the lineup. The lineup was replaced in 2011 by the Nokia Lumia line as the company's primary smartphone lineup.
Quod Libet is a cross-platform free and open-source audio player, tag editor and library organizer. The main design philosophy is that the user knows how they want to organize their music best; the software is therefore built to be fully customizable and extensible using regular expressions and boolean logic. Quod Libet is based on GTK and written in Python, and uses the Mutagen tagging library.