LRCLIB

About LRCLIB

LRCLIB is a free API service for retrieving and publishing song lyrics, including both plain and synchronized (time-stamped) lyrics formats. It provides endpoints to fetch lyrics by track signature (title, artist, album, and duration) or by internal ID, as well as a search endpoint for querying across track, artist, and album fields. Matching precision for lyrics retrieval depends on track duration, which must fall within 2 seconds of the stored record.

The API also supports submitting new lyrics and flagging existing entries for issues such as incorrect lyrics, wrong metadata, or copyright concerns. Publishing and flagging require a Publish Token obtained by solving a proof-of-work challenge via a dedicated endpoint, rather than through account registration.

No API key or registration is required for read access, and the service applies rate limiting, returning a 429 status with a Retry-After header when limits are exceeded. Clients are asked to identify themselves via a User-Agent (or alternative header) and to throttle requests, particularly during batch operations. The service is intended for developers building applications such as music players or library scanners that need lyrics lookup and contribution capabilities.

Key features

• Get synced and plain lyrics for a track by title, artist, album, and duration
• Look up lyrics by LRCLIB's numeric track ID
• Search lyrics records by keyword across track, artist, and album fields
• Publish new lyrics anonymously via a proof-of-work Publish Token
• Flag published lyrics for wrong lyrics, wrong metadata, or copyright issues
• Provides lyrics in plain text, synced (LRC-style timestamps), and raw Lyricsfile YAML formats

Frequently asked questions