Yahoo isn't doing any of this because they want to do it. Just like Apple/Microsoft/Yahoo don't want DRM for music. It's clearly the people that own the lyrics that have this in their agreement.

direct link: http://music.yahoo.com/lyrics

meanwhile, there are a lot lyrics databases and a Google search for

"excerpt from the song" lyrics

works in most cases.

Let's search for "to the left"

on Google: http://www.google.com/search?q=%22to+the+left%22+lyrics&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

and Yahoo lyrics:
http://s6.music.mud.yahoo.com/search/?m=lyrics&p=to+the+left&lyricsSearchSubmit.x=0&lyricsSearchSubmit.y=0

Google's top result is better, though Beyonce dominates the results.

I agree with Ionut, though i usually use lyric007.com

This is bad.

If Yahoo paid them for lyrics, what are they going to do now to all the other lyrics sites out there? Does this mean they need to pay? This sets a bad precedent.

It's a fault of the music industry thinking they need to grab money at every turn. Lyrics are not a product.

Whenver I use a lyrics search, it's because I heard the song on the radio and want to find out what song it is so that I can buy it on itunes or buy the cd at my local used cd store.

Yahoo needs to work on the relevance a bit.

Ran a Yahoo Music search for:
all i wanna do is have some fun

Google and the regular Yahoo search matched it with the right Sheryl Crow song. But, Yahoo Music shows Sheryl Crow as result #6, with variants of Cyndi Lauper's Girls Just Want to Have Fun as results #3-5.

They also have a FAQ on how to turn off explicit lyrics. :-)
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/music/launchcast/basics/launchcast-explicit.html

A little bit more info about Gracenote. Gracenote has their own CD database. They pretty much copied a free database which they now sell access to companies like Apple (Itunes). Users still add new cd data to the database by adding it to CDDB. But those users do not get any of the money that Gracenote makes from selling access to that user created data.

Philipp thinking of the image limits very sharp.

Yahoo should know where is the risk. A text based lyric search will make all the Yahoo tries lost.

In fact, Baidu open it in text mode. Try http://mp3.baidu.com/m?f=ms&tn=baidump3lyric&ct=150994944&lf=2&rn=10&word=have+you+seen+my+childhood&lm=-1
If Baidu open in english?......

Yahoo Lyrics is nothing.

Colin C.
Gracenote just a ticket, Yahoo should do it by themself, or make it perfect, Cause, everyone, can, buy a ticket.

You don't need to select "Lyrics" from the drop-down. Try search for just "science book" and it will return Lyrics results.

This is a stupid waste of money. I hope they didn't get it with a boat load of money. We all can live without Gracenote and Yahoo lyric search..

At this time, Yahoo is just scraping leftovers trying to sustain..