Shazam Encore updated with lyrics, how about iTunes?

Shazam has released another update for its paid Encore app, this one adding full lyrics of over 25,000 songs on the service from provider LyricPlay. It lets you stream the lyrics in real-time as the song plays, so you can sing (or even just read) along. It's not exactly a reason to shell out for the US$5.99 app -- I'm still using the free version to identify music that I listen to, and it works just fine for that purpose. But it's a nice addition to the Encore functionality, and it's good to see that someone has worked out how to make song lyrics available to listeners in a simple and easy way.

In fact, this makes us wonder just where iTunes is on this issue. We've seen rumors for a long time that iTunes has been trying to add a lyrics feature (and there are plenty of ways to just do it yourself if you'd like to do that). But especially now that Apple has figured out something as complicated as iTunes Match, surely lyrics shouldn't be that hard to do, right?

Unfortunately, the RIAA is still against it, and they've actually shut down any relatively easy solutions for quickly bringing lyrics into iTunes. It's a real shame -- especially for any music purchased from the iTunes Store (and because of the way iTunes Match works, all of your music will probably come from the App Store soon), we should really have access to the lyrics as the songs play.