Last.fm's policy on lyrics

[Angus Maiden]

I am incredibly pissed off at the moment. I spent ages posting lyrics for my new album in the wiki pages for each track, and they have been deleted. Clearly last.fm has been taken over by some bigwig dickheads who are anti-artistic/creative freedom. Here's a copy of my communication with them so far:

"Re: Wiki Rules: Lyrics

On 6 Aug 2008, 00:53 bmxgamer wrote:
Many of your wiki edits did not adhere to the style rules and thus were deleted or edited to be within these set rules.

Lyrics should never be posted in track wikis due to copyright.

Please read the wiki FAQ before making any more edits. Failure to adhere to the style rules and guidelines found in the FAQ may result in action taken against you.

Thank you,

~ bmxgamer
last.fm moderator.

W. T. F?

They are MY lyrics. I wrote them, and I can post them if I want. All my work is free, including the lyrics. I demand you put them back This is locking down creative freedom. W. T. F.???"

Do you guys agree? They're my fucking lyrics and I want people to be able to access them. You will not believe how pissed I am right now, last.fm has been my home for many years now and it just looks like things are going sour. FuCK!!!

sorry for venting, but..

FUUUUUUUUUCK

[baskyl]

Hey, know what:
they are deleting my album-cover-artwork!
This is outrageous!
4 out of 6 covers are gone! Simply: not there! Gone away!
Is this just another wiki-rule I don't know of or what?
I did these images with lots of passion and devotion and are directly connotated to the specific album.
I'm so upset I could just cry.

Apart from whining for myself I wanted to say, Gus, I fully understand how you felt about your deleted lyrix in the first place.

[Pixieguts]

That's actually a bug that's happening at the moment. See this thread, it's an ongoing saga but you can get your artwork back up there with a bit of fiddly working around the issue. I think I've replaced about 8 at this point, lol!

[baskyl]

Thank you, Pixxxie, this comes as a very welcome consolation.

Pixieguts said:

....but you can get your artwork back up there with a bit of fiddly working around the issue. ...

yea, I figured it out... "working around the issue" is a daily routine in my job dealing with digital newsroom. I'm so fed up with that phrase chunked out by "IT-Pioneers"....

Thanks for your help!

[dementio13]

Hey Angus...I can understand your anger/dismay at this.
As someone else said, it seems that the corporate lawyers have reared their (dollar shaped) heads and laid down a few "ground rules". I was aware that the Wikis were fairly heavily moderated (from experience: I've had some written content removed), but the T&C (which seem to involve no TLC) state that the Wikis must be descriptive and written in the 3rd person.

Pix has mentioned the general changes at the site which, I am sure we all agree, are to its detriment. But the Wiki rules seem not to have changed from their original template.

What last.fm should now do is provide more server space for labels/artists to upload their lyrics, as they would for their audio. This would make perfect sense, and would suit the 'majors' as well as us little indies. Especially as a similar service is included in iTunes, etc.

As for the moderator in question, I've not encountered him yet, though I am tempted to put something contentious in my Wiki, just to piss him off!

[Angus Maiden]

yea the wiki rules haven't changed but previously we couldn't add wikis for album pages and track pages. when the new site rolled out i thought "friggin awesome i can put lyrics up for every single song", but no. the thing that ticked me off majorly at the time was "Failure to adhere to the style rules and guidelines found in the FAQ may result in action taken against you." i mean that is fucken heavy. action against me? for posting my own lyrics? stupid stupid place. i'm over it now, lastfm is never gonna be what it used to be. a sad sad story.