TuneWiki is taking the idea of giving listeners lyrics to go with their mobile music a stage further by extending it to streaming radio.
The social media player already offers audio and video while displaying synchronized or translated lyrics.
Smartphone-biz.news spoke to Chad Kouse, VP of R&D and CIO of the US-based developers, at the recent Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
He said the streaming internet radio service would allow users to search by genre and select from thousands of global radio stations.
But more interestingly, he said it would also give listeners the ability to add lyrics to songs – even if they "tuned in" mid-way through a track.
"This is the first time anyone has put lyrics and album work on streaming radio," he said.
The free media enhancement application is available for Google Android, but TuneWiki expects to release it for BlackBerry, J2ME, Symbian and Windows Mobile devices by April.
The advanced player also features translation, music maps and a social network.
This music-based network allows users to share music information with friends – what they are playing in real time and allows friends to send feedback to the handset.
TuneWiki displays music maps that show songs playing in the same GPS location and can navigate the map to any other location in the world to see what’s playing there.
It also creates music charts that shows top songs in GPS location, or of any country or state.
Kouse said TuneWiki has had over 2 million downloads of its software since launching fully eight months ago.
It is also possible to download TuneWiki onto jailbroken iPhones and iPod Touches and Kouse said the team are currently working on Palm.
TuneWiki’s goal is to have lyrics always on, always available, always synchronized to music – on any device that can play music back and connect to the internet.
He said a community-based effort was the way to put music and lyrics together.
See below a short video demonstration from MWC.
TuneWiki has also negotiated a partnership with a major music publishers association that grants it the rights to stream lyrics for almost 2 million songs – ensuring the legal use of many submitted lyrics.
Those that fall outside the licensing remit are protected under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which allows unlicensed lyrics to be uploaded, unless the rights-owner asks for a take-down.
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