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April 27, 2008

Source: Benchmark Invests In TuneWiki To Bring Song Lyrics To iPhone

Michael Arrington

43 comments »

Israeli startup TuneWiki delivers user generated song lyrics to music playing on a PC or mobile device.

The service, which was launched in December 2007, became a hit with “hundreds of thousands” of downloads to jailbroken iPhones alone (says our source), despite the very sketchy nature of the main website and the fact that only hacked iPhones can use the app.

Why is TuneWiki so popular? The video at the end of the post shows how it synchronizes lyrics (karaoke style) to music playing on the iPhone.

A source tells us that the startup has raised an initial round of financing from Benchmark Capital’s Israel fund. General Partner Michael Eisenberg joined the board of directors. We’re still trying to track down the size of the round, and if there were any other investors.

Song Lyrics are still relatively hard to find legally on the Internet. Last year Yahoo began publishing lyrics for hundreds of thousands of songs in image format (to reduce copying and scraping, through a partnership with Gracenote.

TuneWiki as a legal song lyric wiki alone is an interesting site (they recently announced that Universal Music is permitting usage). The syncing software can turn it into a real business. Look for it to take off when official third party applications on the iPhone are released this summer. For now, though, the hacked application is one of the feature applications on the iPhone installer.

TuneWiki was founded by serial entrepreneurs and former Israeli fighter pilots Amnon Sarig and Rani Cohen.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, April 27th, 2008 at 1:43 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Trackbacks/Pings (Trackback URL)

  1. TuneWiki « Israel Startup News

    April 27th, 2008 at 2:52 am

  2. metarand » Blog Archive » Mobile Karaoke Hits New Benchmark (Capital)

    April 27th, 2008 at 2:55 am

  3. new iphone application for music lyrics « Online Observer

    April 27th, 2008 at 6:56 am

  4. TechCrunch Japanese アーカイブ » iPhone用カラオケソフトのTuneWikiにBenchmark Capitalが出資か

    April 27th, 2008 at 5:21 pm

  5. Израильский стартап TuneWiki получил финансирование от Benchmark Invests | iReview

    April 28th, 2008 at 2:22 am

  6. April 28, 2008 | next media update

    April 28th, 2008 at 12:30 pm

  7. TuneWiki Makes Android Media Player That Acts Like iPhone

    May 6th, 2008 at 7:54 pm

  8. CrunchGear » Archive » TuneWiki player for Android

    May 7th, 2008 at 1:58 pm

  9. TuneWiki’s iPhone-Like Media Player for Android | The Free 3G Iphone blog

    May 7th, 2008 at 11:20 pm

  10. TuneWiki’s iPhone-Like Media Player for Android | DougsTech.com - Tech News, Reviews, and Guides

    May 8th, 2008 at 11:23 am

  11. Five Google Android Apps We Love (GOOG) | AdsenseTrick.com

    May 13th, 2008 at 10:49 pm

Comments

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  1. john malkovitch

    April 27th, 2008 at 1:54 am

    lyrics hard to find on the net ? you must be kidding. just enter the name of a song in google and you’ll see.

  2. RIAA

    April 27th, 2008 at 2:04 am

    legal lyrics are….

  3. Darren

    April 27th, 2008 at 2:05 am

    its interesting to see if the publishers allow it. Remember all those guitar tab sites that were gone after because the publishers make money selling thier own.

  4. Jay (konsulted.com)

    April 27th, 2008 at 3:26 am

    Must be the first venture backed company for jail broken iphones? It would be great if the PC version integrated with windows media player.

  5. Jerome

    April 27th, 2008 at 4:52 am

    Its nice except that I tried on a couple of songs and the lyrics were just wrong or weird spelling all around. But quite interesting.

  6. Jim McNelis

    April 27th, 2008 at 5:59 am

    its not very often I want to stare at lyrics while I am listening to music. less often on my iphone.

  7. omer

    April 27th, 2008 at 6:53 am

    a

  8. Jason

    April 27th, 2008 at 6:59 am

    Why exactly would I need to look up song lyrics on my iphone for?

  9. Siddharth

    April 27th, 2008 at 7:31 am

    Who will not like to sing along with their famous songs on its personal device? And when there is something which will guide through it by lyrics, then why now? :-D

  10. Jason

    April 27th, 2008 at 7:43 am

    Siddharth, you and the VC’s investing in this service aren’t in touch with reality.

  11. Andrew

    April 27th, 2008 at 9:02 am

    hard to find legally doesn’t mean regular users will go out of their find to make sure the lyrics they are getting are legal

  12. Don

    April 27th, 2008 at 9:41 am

    To Jerom - i actually tried it after i read your comment…also got a song with wrong lyrics. I sent a mail to become an editor, got a response after 30 minutes, took me 1 minute to correct the lyrics, and they showed up immediately after i checked at my iPhone.
    Since then i added 5 songs that did not have lyrics, but, the most amazing thing was that nearly all the songs that i checked had synchronized lyrics and I was very surprised to see how i enjoyed the lyrics with the song.
    The community connection is very nice but kind of slow, they need to improve on that.

    To Jason, I do not know how you can be so sure of yourself. Have you tried it? I am no prophet , and i definately not as smart as the VCs, but i was really surprised to see how addicting it is to listen to music with lyrics.

    I challange you to try it and then tell us what you think :)

  13. Jason

    April 27th, 2008 at 9:59 am

    Don,

    Typically when I’m listening to music, I’m doing 90 other things. Thus the reason for music. I’m not going to stand there and look at my iPhone. I suppose if you’re stuck on an hour long bus ride, and your laptop is dead and you have nothing better to do, then this is a great application.

  14. Joe T

    April 27th, 2008 at 10:28 am

    Clever, but seems to appeal to a market that’s too small.

    If I move to Israel and become a fighter pilot for a few years I wonder if the Benchmark Israel Fund will send me a crate of large bills to kick off my wacky start-up idea…

    Let’s see… (Closes eyes)… I want to do a video site that converts illegal photos of coeds in college bathrooms into black-and-white anime cartoons, and delivers them by RSS feed to users, who write and share captions and plots… I’ll call it Pornime.

    Yeah, that’s the ticket!

  15. Brad

    April 27th, 2008 at 11:26 am

    I think you’d be surprised how viral this app could be…I think most people get a level of gratification when they know/learn the lyrics to music they like…its not that people need to look at the lyrics everytime they listen to the song, but this makes it real easy to learn the lyrics…after all people are too busy or lazy to at the time they are listening to the music to want to go find the lyrics…in this case its always there, and you know exactly what the artist wrote…of course they will need to get this right the first time, I could see more professional services (even if they charge a small fee) that don’t require users to upload, edit, synch content.

  16. Saurabh

    April 27th, 2008 at 11:47 am

    @Brad: it’s viral…. agree….
    @Jason: i wud twitter rather than read lyrics at a time when i’m already tired of the jam… http://twitter.com/arorasaurabh/statuses/794869895

    i had this installed sometime back… found it good… bt truly speaking have used twice or thrice… bt maybe for people whose native language is not english (me included), this can prove to be quite useful…

    @Joe T: lolsssss…. luv the idea… when’s the beta due?

  17. Chris

    April 27th, 2008 at 12:36 pm

    how much was raised?

  18. hmmm

    April 27th, 2008 at 3:45 pm

    guys,
    its easy to bash an idea. i personally maynot use this, but sometimes when i like a song too much, i’ll immidiately search the net to find “what did the song just say”
    i can see it to be very much viral.. afterall, if giving virtual gifts in FB is insanely viral, why not this? those viral users dont read TC and TC readers will hate most viral apps as stupid pointeless apps.

  19. hmmm

    April 27th, 2008 at 3:50 pm

    thier website is confusing though

  20. Jim

    April 27th, 2008 at 5:43 pm

    check out this interesting greasemonkey script for youtube. adds song lyrics next to the video you’re watching.

    http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/22569

    interesting for sure.. and I used it a few times.. haven’t much lately. worth building a company for?

  21. Beverly

    April 27th, 2008 at 6:17 pm

    Wow that’s cool! Now if only it would do that for presidential speeches…like MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! hehehe
    - Fun With War Crimes

  22. Steve

    April 27th, 2008 at 6:50 pm

    Please don’t tell me the `Wiki’ moniker will be macerated into the new Xerox suffix of every lookup - query application!

    Save the Wiki

  23. Andy Wong

    April 27th, 2008 at 7:10 pm

    Oh, no, what a wonderful futurama.

    We have enough Mp3men walking around the streets not aware of traffic while listening to music. Now many of them are going to read lyrics.

  24. Chris

    April 27th, 2008 at 7:58 pm

    http://www.news.com/8301-10787.....7-1_3-0-20

    Is this relevant??? I think it is.

  25. Go2.0TOP

    April 27th, 2008 at 9:17 pm

    @ it’s relevant.

  26. Gray

    April 27th, 2008 at 10:12 pm

    Song lyrics to music playing on a PC or mobile device.

  27. Jerome

    April 28th, 2008 at 3:28 am

    @Don Thanks for the tip I will try that route too.

    This app might be a niche, but it sure is an addicting one but the question is will the novelty of the approach last? For some podcasts, they already include their transcripts to the downloaded file itself.

  28. Geexoo - The Geek Feeds Hub

    April 28th, 2008 at 6:05 am

    I tried it out and it works rather well…wow, what a creative idea…

    It’s in beta and I’m sure there are still some chinks in the armour, but it’s a great start

  29. Ghaus

    April 28th, 2008 at 7:10 am

    There website is bullshit ! I havent figured it out as to how it will work ? lol

  30. Ghaus

    April 28th, 2008 at 7:10 am

    Their website is bullshit ! I haven’t figured out as to how it will work ? lol

  31. mark s

    April 28th, 2008 at 12:31 pm

    case study: shazam

    Novelty - yes - business? No.

  32. Miles (SEM iCluck)

    April 29th, 2008 at 1:07 pm

    Novelty, big TIME - the idea is a good idea but why on the iPhone? What about just porting some app into iTunes for the lyrics? Another thing, people can JUST Google the lyrics ….

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