[REQUEST] Add support for LRC (lyrics file format) streaming and "Synced Lyrics" syncronization to the Resonate Protocol specification?

[Hedda]

Basis for discussion: seen support was added to aioresonate for sending text based metadata -> Resonate-Protocol/aioresonate#16

"Resonate is a multi-room music experience protocol. The goal of the protocol is to orchestrate all devices that make up the music listening experience. This includes outputting audio on multiple speakers simultaneously, screens and lights visualizing the audio or album art, and wall tablets providing media controls."

I hope this request with an extension of that is OK considering that this is meant to become a "multi-room music experience protocol", so perhaps long-term you will consider adding this request asking to support streaming standard LRC lyrics as metadata to enable syncronization "LRC" lyrics files so that compatible clients (players) can read and display syncronized lyrics in in order to show synced song lyrics for "karaoke" resentation style via a standardized metod in the future? Displaying song lyrics together with with album art and artist metadata makes for a great experience:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LRC_(file_format)

Update: I understand that Music Assistant player beta now has support for local LRC files that are named same as local audio files:

• https://github.com/orgs/music-assistant/discussions/1652

  "When lyrics are available for the track being played then the LYRICS selectable label will be shown. Upon selection, the queue will be replaced by the lyrics which will be in sync with the music when timing information is available. Accurate lyric selection is contingent upon the metadata providers and may not be accurate for alternate versions of a song."

  • https://beta.music-assistant.io/ui/?h=lyrics#now-playing-view

Anyway, LRC (short for lyrics) is a a common standard for text based file-format for "Synced Lyrics" (song lyrics with the timings for the lines of songs text) that enable synchronizes song lyrics with an audio file using a "timed text" (similar in concept to subtitles synchronization for videos). Allows for compatible client media player software (including digital audio players) to display song lyrics synchronously with a playing song. Nornally the lyrics file just has the same name as the audio file, just with a different filename extension and operates as a sidecar file. These lyrics files can be manually created and written in a standard text editor but purpose-made software has been made to ease and automate the creation of lyrics files.

Please also see this related request to add Lyrics integration to Music Assistant:

• https://github.com/orgs/music-assistant/discussions/1652

LRCLIB server is a completely free service for finding and contributing synchronized lyrics (built on open-source backend code) and now has an open beta API:

• https://lrclib.net

  • https://lrclib.net/docs

    • https://github.com/tranxuanthang/lrclib

Musixmatch is perhaos the world's largest commercial song lyrics catalog and there are ways to download lyrics from there to local LRC files:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musixmatch

genius-lyrics is a (HACS) custom component for Home Assistant for fetch song lyrics from Genius.com music metadata database:

• https://github.com/robert-alfaro/genius-lyrics

There are software that mass-download LRC files from song lyrics databases to off-line. syncedlyrics and lrcget are two examples;

• https://github.com/moehmeni/syncedlyrics
• https://github.com/tranxuanthang/lrcget

Kodi has has a very popular open-source LRC Lyrics addon written in Python script that can read .lrc/.txt lyric file or search and show synchronized/unsynchronized lyrics:

• https://kodi.wiki/view/Add-on:CU_LRC_Lyrics
  • https://gitlab.com/ronie/script.cu.lrclyrics/
    • https://kodi.wiki/view/Script_lyrics

Jellyfin also supports lyrics plugins, such as the LrcLib plugin by Felitendo, that automatically downloads and applies lyrics to songs:

• https://github.com/Felitendo/jellyfin-plugin-lyrics

Off-topic but FYI, Kodi also have support for most other karaoke computer file formats, and is able to play and display timed song lyrics text from the text-based LRC files, (with XBMC code taking that further to also read and display KAR MIDI files as well as graphics from CD+G and MP3+G files).

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karaoke

For reference, Lyrics are now available for all Spotify users so it is a another popular use case to make music even more of an "experience". even if they do not always show a song and lyrics in sync:

• https://support.spotify.com/us/article/lyrics/

There are even third-party viewers that allow you to view the lyrics of the current playing Spotify song in your browser, like example this one:

• https://github.com/brentvollebregt/spotify-lyrics-viewer

LYRICS display with Music Assistant beta with local LRC files:

Spotify Lyrics Viewer screenshot showing lyrics display:

LRCGET screenshot showing lyrics display:

Kodi screenshots showing lyrics displays:

[potelux]

Since this is being implemented in Music Assistant, it would be a good idea to do in the Resonate Protocol. Probably not for the first version shipped out, but could easily be added to the metadata role.

I'll make a quick PR and the devs can choose if they ever want to support it.

EDIT: Here ya go

[Hedda]

If the the client can receive the lyrics from an HTTP location then might be easier to expand it to support non-text formatted lyrics(?), such as example old classic kareoke files for CD+G (CD+Graphics) and CD+EG / CD+XG (Extended TV-Graphics) which provides images instead of text. Commonly available as CDG+MP3 files:

-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD%2BG

FYI, for reference, the new Music Assistent 2.6.0 release has ”enhanced lyrics” support:

• https://github.com/music-assistant/server/releases/tag/2.6.0

Enhanced Lyrics Support

• LRCLIB lyrics metadata provider - New provider for synchronized lyrics by @jozefKruszynski in Add LRCLIB lyrics metadata provider music-assistant/server#2123
• LRC lyric parsing for Tidal - Time-synced lyrics now available for Tidal tracks by @jozefKruszynski in Add lrc lyric parsing to tidal music-assistant/server#2081
• Local LRC lyrics parsing - Filesystem provider now supports local .lrc lyric files by @fmunkes in Add local lrc lyrics parsing to filesystem provider music-assistant/server#2166