Fetching lyrics in Unix

songs.md

Fetching lyrics in the command line

Objective: Print the lyrics for the current playing song.

How: We'll create a small bash script to do the fetching for us (using curl) and then we'll display it either in the terminal or in our $EDITOR

Get the current song

First we'll need to get the name of the current song and its artist:

Mac

iTunes (Mountain Lion+):

osascript -e'tell application "iTunes"' -e'get artist of current track' -e'end tell'
osascript -e'tell application "iTunes"' -e'get name of current track' -e'end tell'

iTunes (Lion and older):

arch -i386 osascript -e'tell application "iTunes"' -e'get artist of current track' -e'end tell'
arch -i386 osascript -e'tell application "iTunes"' -e'get name of current track' -e'end tell'

GNU/Linux and others

Rythmbox:

rhythmbox-client --print-playing-format %ta
rhythmbox-client --print-playing-format %tt

MPD:

mpc -f %artist% | head -n 1
mpc -f %title% | head -n 1

Banshee:

# you can find a full Banshee script in the comments section.
banshee --query-artist
banshee --query-title

Spotify:

# you can find a full Spotify script for GNU/Linux in the comments section

In Amarok you might be able to do something like this:

qdbus org.mpris.amarok /Player GetMetadata
# match the artist and title lines

Get the lyrics

Change depending on your editor:

#!/bin/bash
artist=`osascript -e'tell application "iTunes"' -e'get artist of current track' -e'end tell'`
title=`osascript -e'tell application "iTunes"' -e'get name of current track' -e'end tell'`

curl does the fetching for us:

curl -s --get "https://makeitpersonal.co/lyrics" --data-urlencode "artist=$artist" --data-urlencode "title=$title"

Sample script

I use something like this on macOS:

#!/bin/bash
artist=`osascript -e'tell application "iTunes"' -e'get artist of current track' -e'end tell'`
title=`osascript -e'tell application "iTunes"' -e'get name of current track' -e'end tell'`
song=`curl -s --get "https://makeitpersonal.co/lyrics" --data-urlencode "artist=$artist" --data-urlencode "title=$title"`

echo -e "$artist - $title\n$song"

To try it just save, chmod it and make sure something's playing to try it out:

chmod +x lyrics
./lyrics

If all goes well you should see the lyrics on your screen after a second or two.

Formatting

If you want a cleaner output for the lyrics you can pass the song results to less and print it with a bit of formatting (please try it!):

echo -e "$artist_name - $song_title\n$song" | less -FX

Here we are adding an "Artist - Song" header and displaying the results as they were meant to be seen!

Emacs

[](https://stallman.org/saint.html)

If you want the output in a *Lyrics* buffer you can add a small function to your Emacs config:

(defun lyrics()
  "Prints the lyrics for the current song"
  (interactive)
  ;; replace path below with your own.
  (let ((song (shell-command-to-string "/usr/local/bin/lyrics"))) 
  (if (equal song "")
    (message "No lyrics - Opening browser.")
  (switch-to-buffer (create-file-buffer "Lyrics"))
  (insert song)
  (goto-line 0))))

M-x lyrics and you're done.

Credits

• @taborj: MPD instructions and less -FX.
• @arsinux: Banshee script.
• @Glutanimate: --data-urlencode for curl and Spotify for GNU/Linux script.

Well done mate, nice to have.

Thanks for this, it's perfect!

I did a slight modification or two, though. I'm using MPD, so I first pulled the artist and title using the following (which I put into some variables, $artist and $title):

mpc -f %artist% | head -n 1
mpc -f %title% | head -n 1

The other issue I ran into was curl on OpenBSD did not translate spaces in the artist or title into %20, so my URL didn't work. Solution? Use wget:

wget -qO- "http://makeitpersonal.co/lyrics?artist=$artist&title=$title"

Also, one other thing to note. If you use the -FX flag on less, the output is much friendlier. The -F flag will terminate less if the output fits on one page (saving you from having to exit out of less), and the -X flag will stop less from sending the termcap initialization and deinitialization strings, which can cause things like clearing the screen when less is exited.

@taborj: thanks for the less trick and the MPD instructions. I hope you don't mind me adding them to the gist.

Script for Banshee music player
function lyrics {
artist=$(banshee --query-artist)
artist=${artist:8}
title=$(banshee --query-title)
title=${title:7}
artist=$(perl -MURI::Escape -e 'print uri_escape($ARGV[0]);' "$artist")
title=$(perl -MURI::Escape -e 'print uri_escape($ARGV[0]);' "$title")
curl -s "http://makeitpersonal.co/lyrics?artist=$artist&title=$title"
}

Thanks for posting this tutorial! It has been very useful.

A couple of remarks:

• curl actually has URL encoding built in. You just have to do a GET request and supply the artist and title fields with the --data-urlencode option, e.g.:

  LyricsAPI="http://makeitpersonal.co/lyrics/"
  curl -s --get "$LyricsAPI" --data-urlencode "artist=${TrackArtist}" --data-urlencode "title=${TrackTitle}"  

• Here's a an implementation of the script for Spotify on Linux:

  #!/bin/bash
  
  SP_DEST="org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.spotify"
  SP_PATH="/org/mpris/MediaPlayer2"
  SP_MEMB="org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.Player"
  
  LyricsAPI="http://makeitpersonal.co/lyrics/"
  
  SPOTIFY_METADATA="$(dbus-send                                                 \
      --print-reply                                  `# We need the reply.`       \
      --dest=$SP_DEST                                                             \
      $SP_PATH                                                                    \
      org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties.Get                                         \
      string:"$SP_MEMB" string:'Metadata'                                         \
      | grep -Ev "^method"                           `# Ignore the first line.`   \
      | grep -Eo '("(.*)")|(\b[0-9][a-zA-Z0-9.]*\b)' `# Filter interesting fiels.`\
      | sed -E '2~2 a|'                              `# Mark odd fields.`         \
      | tr -d '\n'                                   `# Remove all newlines.`     \
      | sed -E 's/\|/\n/g'                           `# Restore newlines.`        \
      | sed -E 's/(xesam:)|(mpris:)//'               `# Remove ns prefixes.`      \
      | sed -E 's/^"//'                              `# Strip leading...`         \
      | sed -E 's/"$//'                              `# ...and trailing quotes.`  \
      | sed -E 's/\"+/|/'                             `# Regard "" as seperator.`  \
      | sed -E 's/ +/ /g'                            `# Merge consecutive spaces.`\
    )"
  
  TrackArtist=$(echo "$SPOTIFY_METADATA" | sed -n 's/artist|//p')
  TrackTitle=$(echo "$SPOTIFY_METADATA" | sed -n 's/title|//p')
  
  curl -s --get "$LyricsAPI" --data-urlencode "artist=${TrackArtist}" --data-urlencode "title=${TrackTitle}"

@glutanimate that is exactly what I needed! that is so awesome thank you so much! 💯

I whipped up this to grab the currently playing song and fetch the lyrics.
https://github.com/nick-parry/songLyrics

This way I can be lazy and just run: songLyrics spotify to get the lyrics. It will try 3 different sites before giving up. Just some random hacker ware, but I like it. :)

Awesome!

i got inspired from this script and wrote my own that does:

1. use id3 lyrics tag if available
2. fetch from net, update id3 tag if was missing

https://github.com/glensc/mpd-lyrics

Instead of all those different commands for each player, why not just use playerctl metadata title and playerctl metadata artist?

i believe @glutanimate made it without knowing that playerctl was a thing, it would be much much much MUCH MUCH MUUUCH smaller if it to be using playerctl.