LRC (short for LyRiCs) is a computer

file format A file format is a standard way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file. It specifies how bits are used to encode information in a digital storage medium. File formats may be either proprietary or free. Some file formats ...

that synchronizes song

lyrics Lyrics are words that make up a song, usually consisting of verses and choruses. The writer of lyrics is a lyricist. The words to an extended musical composition such as an opera are, however, usually known as a "libretto" and their writer, a ...

with an audio file, such as

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...

Vorbis Vorbis is a free and open-source software project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The project produces an audio coding format and software reference encoder/decoder (codec) for lossy audio compression. Vorbis is most commonly used in conjun ...

MIDI MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and re ...

. When an audio file is played with certain music players on a computer or on modern

digital audio player A portable media player (PMP) (also including the related digital audio player (DAP)) is a portable consumer electronics device capable of storing and playing digital media such as audio, images, and video files. The data is typically stored o ...

s, the song lyrics are displayed. The lyrics file generally has the same name as the audio file, with a different filename extension. For example, ''song.mp3'' and ''song.lrc''. The LRC format is text-based and similar to

subtitle Subtitles and captions are lines of dialogue or other text displayed at the bottom of the screen in films, television programs, video games or other visual media. They can be transcriptions of the screenplay, translations of it, or informati ...

files.

Formats

Simple format

Simple LRC format was introduced by

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

-based Kuo (Djohan) Shiang-shiang's ''Lyrics Displayer''. It was one of the first programs, if not the first, that attempted to simulate Karaoke performance. It usually displays a whole line of lyrics, but it is possible to display a word at a time, such as one would see in modern Karaoke machines, by creating a time tag for each word rather than each line. ''Kuo's Lyrics Displayer'' was created in 1998 and was accompanied with a plug-in for

Winamp Winamp is a media player for Microsoft Windows originally developed by Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev by their company Nullsoft, which they later sold to AOL in 1999 for $80 million. It was then acquired by Radionomy in 2014. Sinc ...

. The Line Time Tags are in the format m:ss.xx'' where mm is minutes, ss is seconds and xx is hundredths of a second. * Normal example: 0:12.00ine 1 lyrics 0:17.20ine 2 lyrics 0:21.10ine 3 lyrics ... m:ss.xxast lyrics line ID tags may appear before the lyrics, although some players may not recognize or simply ignore this. r:''Lyrics artist''br /> l:''Album where the song is from''br /> i:''Lyrics (song) title''br /> u:''Creator of the Songtext'' ength:''How long the song is'' y:''Creator of the LRC file''br /> ffset:''+/- Overall timestamp adjustment in milliseconds, + shifts time up, - shifts down''br /> e:''The player or editor that created the LRC file''br /> e:''version of program'' * Example with ID tags: r:Chubby Checker oppure Beatles, The l:Hits Of The 60's - Vol. 2 – Oldies i:Let's Twist Again u:Written by Kal Mann / Dave Appell, 1961 ength: 2:23 0:12.00aku Penda Piya-Naku Taka Piya-Mpenziwe 0:15.30ome more lyrics ... ...

Simple format extended

Available only in Walaoke from Walasoft. The ability to change and specify the gender of the lyrics by using M: Male, F: Female, D: Duet. * Example: 0:12.00ine 1 lyrics 0:17.20: Line 2 lyrics 0:21.10: Line 3 lyrics 0:24.00ine 4 lyrics 0:28.25: Line 5 lyrics 0:29.02ine 6 lyrics Let's say we use blue for male, red for female and pink for Duet. Line 1 using the default color (blue) when no tag is found. Line 2 lyrics start with red when F: is found. Line 3 lyrics start with blue when M: is found. Line 4 lyrics stays blue when no tag is found. Line 5 lyrics start with pink when D: is found. Line 6 lyrics stays pink when no tag is found.

Enhanced format

Enhanced LRC format is an extension of Simple LRC Format developed by the designer of A2 Media Player. The differences: * The line timestamp is the end of the previous word. ** This allows LRC players to determine the duration of the previous word, and when to display the next line. * Adds a Word Time Tag in the format: <mm:ss.xx>. Format example: m:ss.xx line 1 word 1 line 1 word 2 ... line 1 last word m:ss.xx line 2 word 1 line 2 word 2 ... line 2 last word ... m:ss.xx last line word 1 last line word 2 ... last line last word Example of an Enhanced LRC file: r: Jefferson Airplane l: Surrealistic Pillow u: Jefferson Airplane ength: 2:58 y: lrc-maker i: Somebody to Love 0:00.00<00:00.04> When <00:00.16> the <00:00.82> truth <00:01.29> is <00:01.63> found <00:03.09> to <00:03.37> be <00:05.92> lies 0:06.47<00:07.67> And <00:07.94> all <00:08.36> the <00:08.63> joy <00:10.28> within <00:10.53> you <00:13.09> dies 0:13.34<00:14.32> Don't <00:14.73> you <00:15.14> want <00:15.57> somebody <00:16.09> to <00:16.46> love

Support

Hardware or OEM Software

Huawei Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. ( ; ) is a Chinese multinational technology corporation headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China. It designs, develops, produces and sells telecommunications equipment, consumer electronics and various smar ...

's Standard Music Player *

Samsung The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ...

's Standard Music Player *

Xiaomi Corporation (; ), commonly known as Xiaomi and registered as Xiaomi Inc., is a Chinese designer and manufacturer of consumer electronics and related software, home appliances, and household items. Behind Samsung, it is the second largest ma ...

's Standard Music Player *

Meizu Meizu Technology Co., Ltd. () is a Chinese consumer electronics manufacturer based in Zhuhai, Guangdong. Founded in 2003 by Jack Wong, Meizu began as a manufacturer of MP3 players and later MP4 players. In 2008, Meizu moved its focus to smartph ...

M3 Music Card {{Infobox Information appliance , name = M3 Music Card , image = , manufacturer = Meizu , type = Digital audio playerPortable media player , releasedate = , connectivity = USB 2.0 , lifespan = since 2007 , unitssold = ...

and

M6 Mini Player The M6 miniPlayer, from Meizu, is a flash-based portable media player that plays audio files in MP3, WMA, WAV, FLAC, APE and Ogg and is also capable of AVI video playback (using the XVID codec) on a 2.4-inch QVGA screen. The Mini Player include ...

Creative Labs Creative Technology Ltd. is a Singaporean multinational technology company headquartered with overseas offices in Shanghai, Tokyo, Dublin, and Silicon Valley (where in the US it is known as Creative Labs). The principal activities of the compa ...

MuVo The Creative MuVo (in some markets, formerly ''Creative NOMAD MuVo'') is a range of digital audio players produced by Creative Technology Limited, launched in 2002. Most models in the MuVo range use flash memory for storing data; the only excepti ...

V100 * Archos 5, when LRC file found with the same name as the song *

Rockbox Rockbox is a free and open-source software replacement for the OEM firmware in various forms of digital audio players (DAPs) with an original kernel. It offers an alternative to the player's operating system, in many cases without removing the or ...

compatible devices. Se
Manual entry
*

Nokia Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia) is a Finnish multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications industry, telecommunications, technology company, information technology, and consumer electronics corporatio ...

's Symbian devices: "Music Player with lyrics available for selected software versions of Nokia 5800XM, X6 and 5230" *

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...

NWZ-E350 Series/E450 Series/E460 Series/E470 Series/A15/A17

Walkman Walkman, stylised as , is a brand of portable audio players manufactured and marketed by Japanese technology company Sony since 1979. The original Walkman was a portable cassette player and its popularity made "walkman" an unofficial term for ...

;

Sony Tablet S The Tablet S (formerly named S1) is the first modern tablet computer released by Sony. Featuring a "unique asymmetric design", the Tablet S runs Google's Android 3.2 Honeycomb operating system and features a multitouch display, 1 GHz Nvid ...

(With an embedded music player based on Android) *

Caanoo The GP2X Caanoo, more commonly known as Caanoo, stylized CAANOO, is an open source, Linux-based handheld video game console and portable media player developed by the South Korean company GamePark Holdings. It was released on August 16, 2010 in ...

, when LRC file found with the same name as the song *

GP2X Wiz The GP2X Wiz is a handheld game console and portable media player developed by South Korean company GamePark Holdings running a Linux kernel-based embedded operating system. It was released on May 12, 2009, and was also the first console from bo ...

, when LRC file found with the same name as the song *

TEAC TEAC may refer to: * TEAC Corporation () is a Japanese electronics manufacturer. TEAC was created by the merger of the Tokyo Television Acoustic Company, founded in 1953, and the Tokyo Electro-Acoustic Company, founded in 1956. Overview ...

MP-222, when LRC file found with the same name as the song * Transcend's MP330, when LRC file found with the same name as the song * Cocktail Audio X40, X50 when LRC file found with the same name as the song

Software

Modern Applications
Musicolet
Music Player for Android (supports Creating and Viewing synchronized lyrics in LRC format)
Akari's LRC Maker
(open-source online simple LRC maker/editor)
GitHub link

LyricsX
(open-source, MacOS App Store approved application to view lyrics on screen and/or Touch Bar of MacBooks)
App Store link

GitHub link

LRC Maker
(online simple and enhanced LRC maker/editor)
KaraFun Player
(a third-party application that can visualise both simple and enhanced lrc files) Other * Tauon Music Box (for Linux) * Sony

Media Go Media Go is a discontinued free multimedia management application that runs on Microsoft Windows, developed by Sony Entertainment Network. Media Go manages content on Sony family products including Sony Mobile phones, the PlayStation Portable, Pla ...

(for Windows 10, 8, 7, Vista, and XP, Create and edit lyrics) *

K-Multimedia Player K-Multimedia Player (commonly known as The KMPlayer, KMPlayer or KMP) is an Adware-supported media player for Windows and iOS that can play most current audio and video formats, including VCD, HDML, DVD, AVI, MKV, Ogg, OGM, 3GP, MPEG-1/2/4, ...

* lrcShow-X (free software for

X Window System The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting wit ...

, uses

D-Bus In computing, D-Bus (short for "Desktop Bus") is a message-oriented middleware mechanism that allows communication between multiple processes running concurrently on the same machine. D-Bus was developed as part of the freedesktop.org project, ...

to communicate with audio player) * MiniLyrics (for Windows, Mac OS X & Android, own a large LRC database) * StepMania * OSD Lyrics (for Linux) *

Kodi KODI (1400 AM) is a radio station broadcasting a news/talk format. Licensed to Cody, Wyoming, United States, the station is currently owned by the Big Horn Radio Network, a division of Legend Communications of Wyoming, LLC, and features programm ...

(up to v15) /

Boxee Boxee was a cross-platform freeware HTPC (Home Theater PC) software application with a 10-foot user interface and social networking features designed for the living-room TV. It enabled its users to view, rate and recommend content to their frie ...

Plex (software) Plex is an American streaming media service and a client–server media player platform, made by Plex, Inc. The Plex Media Server organizes video, audio, and photos from a user's collections and from online services, and streams it to the playe ...

Foobar2000 foobar2000 (often abbreviated as fb2k or f2k) is a freeware audio player for Microsoft Windows, iOS and Android developed by Peter Pawłowski. It has a modular design, which provides user flexibility in configuration and customization. Stan ...

(wit
foo_uie_lyrics
component) * Mediabox (for Nokia Maemo) * ptlyrics (for Palm OS) *

MusicBee MusicBee is a freeware media player for playback and organization of audio files on Microsoft Windows, built using the audio library. Features * Audio playback: MP3, AAC, M4A, MPC, OGG, FLAC, ALAC, APE, Opus, , WavPack, WMA, WAV, MIDI, M ...

* LineSpec displays lyrics in combination with a few media players * YouTube Movie Maker (can make lyric videos) * Lyrimer * Neutron Player for Android Mobile Devices * AutoLyric *

AIMP AIMP (Artem Izmaylov Media Player) is a freeware audio player for Windows and Android, originally developed by Russian developer Artem Izmaylov ( rus, Артём Измайлов, Artyom Izmajlov).

(wit
WebLyrics v0.2 Preview
an
MyClouds
plugin) * Retro Music Player *Medoly (for Android, also supports Enhanced LRC formats and other lyric formats)
LRCMakerPro
for Android Devices *Vanilla Music (with Lyrics search plugin) * OneStagePlayer * mpv * Poweramp (bet

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lrc (File Format) Subtitle file formats Lyrics

Formats

Simple format

Simple format extended

Enhanced format

Support

Hardware or OEM Software

Software

See also

References