A legal lyric website is to be launched in America.
Yahoo Music will allow fans to access up to 400,000 songs by artists like Prince and Beyonce.
Although lyric sites exist online, it will mark the first time major publishers will have given consent to such a site.
The lyrics come from Gracenote, the company which powers the CD look-up facility on programmes like iTunes.
Users can search for songs using the Yahoo Music search bar, simply by entering a partial lyric from the song.
Over 100 music publishers have licensed their artists’ lyrics including the top five BMG Music Publishing, EMI Music Publishing, Sony/ ATV Music Publishing, Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner /Chappell Music.
Between them, they publish the words and music written by acts like The Beatles, Bob Dylan and U2.
Ralph Peer head of music publishing firm peermusic, told BBC News: “I think publishers stand to gain quite significantly from this new revenue stream.”
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