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TuneWiki social music player to shut down on June 28th
If you've been interested in social music listening, there's a good chance you've heard of TuneWiki's lyric syncing and discovery services. Unfortunately, you won't be hearing about them for much longer -- the company is shutting down on June 28th. The firm hasn't explained its decision, but we wouldn't count on any content working after the cutoff date. We've reached out for more details; for now, the only certainty is that lyric lovers will have to scramble for alternatives.
Hands on with TuneWiki for iPhone
Yesterday I downloaded a copy of TuneWiki, the new free iPhone application that lets you listen to streaming radio and your personal media collection while displaying lyrics. I tried out Lyrics+ last week and was looking forward to seeing what TuneWiki would bring to the table. What I found was a mix of promising capabilities mixed with a few preliminary growing pains. What's great about TuneWiki (iTunes link) is its ready access to so many media sources. When I started it already listening to music, it immediately loaded the proper album, cued up the lyrics to the proper point, and started showing me a live feed of the synced words. That's pretty awesome. It should be noted that TuneWiki has a direct licensing deal with Universal EMI, Sony, and about 16,000 publishers in 1800 groups including Warner (via the Harry Fox Agency) as well as deals in Greece, Israel, Spain, Germany, Turkey, and so forth. Every attempt has been made to license this lyric use world wide. Amnon Sarig, TuneWiki founder, told TUAW that he's worked hard on securing these world wide licensing agreements to ensure that TuneWiki has rights to display lyrics wherever it is used. "No one else has worldwide exploitation rights," he told us. "I've been in the licensing business for 11 years and as far as I know, the only other application on App store that exploits lyrics legally has their licenses limited to the United States."
