The Importance of Typing Up Your Lyrics

Having your lyrics ready is crucial for boosting discoverability and engagement. Well-documented lyrics ensure your music gets found and played. They're also vital for industry pros looking to sync your tracks. Here's why and how to format your lyrics for maximum impact.

Why Do I Need to Type Up My Lyrics?

• Lyric search: listeners are increasingly searching for catchy lyrics they’ve heard on TikTok or social media via Spotify’s search bar.
• Increasing use of voice assist: listeners can now ask questions like “Which song has the lyrics 'such-and-such'? on the likes of Siri and Alexa.
• Sync licensing & clearance: having properly formatted lyrics is beneficial for industry professionals like publishers and music supervisors who might need this information for licensing in TV, movies, and ads.
• Embedding on sites: Boost your visibility online by embedding lyrics into your own website, lyrics databases, SoundCloud, and YouTube descriptions to increase your chance of appearing in search results.

How Should I Format My Lyrics?

Apple Music offers clear guidelines, which recommend following:

• Accurate Transcription: Transcribe everything integral to the vocal part and ensure it matches the audio.
• Structure: Follow the song's structure with section changes (chorus, verse, intro, bridge, hook) indicated by line breaks.
• Line Spacing: Use single spaces for lyric lines and double spaces between sections.

Capitalisation

Follow traditional grammar rules:

• Capitalise proper nouns, e.g., “God,” “NASA.”
• Begin each lyric line with a capital letter.

Punctuation

Avoid periods or commas at the end of lines; use exclamation points, question marks, and quotation marks as needed.

• Use traditional grammar rules within lines:some text
  • Hyphens for split words: “What's happ-”

• Parentheses for background vocals: “(Oh yeah)”
• Apostrophes for contractions: “’Rari for Ferrari”

Repeated Lines

• Lyrics should match the audio. Write repeated lines out fully.

Correct:

• I'll keep barking up the wrong tree
• I'll keep barking up the wrong tree
• I'll keep barking up the wrong tree

Incorrect:

• I'll keep barking up the wrong tree (Repeat x3)

Spoken Word Content

• Do not transcribe spoken word or conversational parts of a song.

Non-Word Vocal Sounds

• Transcribe sparingly and only if they add to the song’s content.
• Improvised scatting is considered instrumental and should not be transcribed.

Clean and Explicit Lyrics

• Label lyrics as "clean" only if there's a corresponding explicit version available.

Transcribe explicit language as it’s heard:

• Audio: "I'm the motherfucking man"
• Lyrics: I'm the motherfucking man

Censor bleeped words with asterisks:

• Audio: "I'm the [bleeped out] man"
• Lyrics: I'm the **** man

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