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.