Hey guys. I was just doing some keyword research, and I found out that lyrics is the top searched keyword in the world (excluding names of companies like Facebook, Yahoo etc). Now I was wondering who are the founders of the top lyrics sites? I thought they would be well documented rockstars like all the top social site owners, but I can't seem to find any information on any of them. I could only find background info on the founder of Metrolyrics. I know many of the lyrics site guys might want to keep a low profile due to the legal issues of running such a site, but I was thinking maybe the people from their native countries might have the inside scoop as to who is running these lyrics sites. (Promise I'm not a cop )
I saw a report recently from a vendor of anti-virus software like McAfee or something that indicated these top searched keywords like lyrics, are more likely to lead to risky websites that are known to contain cross-site scripting attacks, trojans, and other bad behaviors. But that is probably expected to happen with anything that becomes popular. I remember seeing flogs and temporary domains setup within minutes of major news headlines such as the airplane crash landing in the Hudson river, etc. But to answer your question, I would say a lot of these types of free lyrics sites have dried up and gone away, in favor of legitimate websites that pay a licensing fee to the copyright owners. For example, if you search for guitar tabs and lyrics on about.com they now send you over to musicnotes.com. Do you have a list of lyrics websites you want to know more about? If you list them here maybe we can crowdsource the effort to track down more details about the founders and operators.
I don't think e-lyrics.net exists anymore. It goes to a domain parking or "domain for sale" page. I'm sending you a PM with some details I found about the others. Edit: sorry about the crappy formatting of the PM text, I don't know why it did not keep my line breaks and proper spacing. And I don't have time to care about fixing it.