Add lyrics

Riff Lyrics comes with Riff and is on unless you turn it off. It gives Now Playing a Lyrics view: plain words for a song, or words timed to the music, where the line being sung stands out and a tap on a line plays from there.

From the files

When you upload a song, the lyrics in its tags are read with the rest of its details, in MP3, FLAC, Ogg and M4A files alike, and Riff Lyrics also reads an MP3's timed lyrics. A track whose file has lyrics needs nothing more.

Type them in

1. Go to Media, then Library, and click a song.
2. Type or paste the words into its Lyrics field.
3. Save.

The field takes plain text, kept line for line, or timed lyrics in LRC, with a [mm:ss.xx] stamp before each line, or WebVTT, starting with WEBVTT. In LRC, <mm:ss.xx> stamps inside a line time each word, and [offset:+250] shows every line 250 milliseconds sooner. A blank line between timed lines is a pause. Clear the field and the track has no lyrics.

Where listeners see them

A track with lyrics gets a Lyrics button in the player bar on a wide screen, and a Lyrics chip in Now Playing on a phone.

Only tracks with lyrics show the button, and only to visitors who may read the track.

Turn it off

Go to Settings, then Riff, and untick Riff Lyrics under Extensions. On a network, Network Admin, then Settings, then Riff, can set it for every site, as Run Riff for a client or a network explains.

Under the hood

• The words are kept where WordPress keeps an MP3's lyrics, unsynchronised_lyric in the attachment's metadata, and are in wp/v2/media as media_details.unsynchronised_lyric and the plugin's own riff_lyrics field.
• Riff Lyrics is built only on Riff's public surface: the view is registered on riff_register with riff_register_view(), riff_track marks the tracks that have lyrics, and in the browser window.riff.view() draws it and window.riff.seek() plays from a tapped line. Extensions explains how it ships inside Riff.
• Its code is in plugins/riff-lyrics.