Is there something in the Android architecture or API that prevents people from creating MP3 players that read embedded lyrics?

Question

When I play certain MP3 files (such as lessons from JapanesePod101.com) on my iPod Touch, lyrics or transcripts that are embedded in the MP3 files are displayed in the media player. The lyrics are, I believe, stored as ID3/ID4 tags in the MP3 metadata.

I find this to be an extremely useful feature, and I believe I'm not alone. Despite that, neither the stock Android media player nor any other media player I've downloaded from the Market seems to support this. I just have not been able to find any way to get feature on my Nexus One.

This feature is important enough to me that I'm considering learning Android development just so I can write a simple media player that displays embedded lyrics or notes. However, the fact that nobody else seems to have done this makes me wonder - is it even possible? Is there something in the Android architecture or APIs that make it difficult or impossible to read and display lyrics information from MP3 files? I'd hate to get deep into the learning process and find out what I'm aiming for can't easily be done. (I mean, if all else fails I assume I could write my own MP3-decoder, but that's more trouble than I'm willing to go through right now).

I've already asked this question on the Android Enthusiasts Stack Exchange Beta Site, but in retrospect I decided it was more of a programming question and decided it was better to ask here.

Answer 1

Yeah, definitely more of a programming question. Just from my brief experience of reading through the ID3 spec, I think it's probably just that decoding ID3 tags is a complete PITA. I'm sure it can be done, as there are MP3 tag editing apps available for Android (whether any support lyrics or not, I do not know).

ID3v2.3 seems to have support for both synchronized and unsynchronized lyrics through the SYLT and USLT frames of the header. I imagine it's just such an underused feature that it isn't worth the effort to most to do so. Purchased MP3s don't carry this information (I've always wondered why not?), so they would have to manually be added (or automatically via a lyric service API, but there's a lot more coding involved with that).

Here is the ID3v2.3 spec if you'd like to look into it further...(abandon hope all ye who enter here)

Answer 2

The problem may be that most people would use the built-in mp3 playback mechanisms, and this may neither support lyric display nor be very easy to keep synchronized with something else doing lyric display.

So it may be that something needs to be written which does it's own mp3 decoding.

Most likely this would want to be done in native code. On the other hand, on android, audio output (and unless you use opengl, video display) pretty much has to be done from java. So you are looking at a fair amount of work to decode data with a native library and then dispatch it for playback and display from java.

So to answer your question - is it possible? Definitely

Is it made easy by the android APIs? - not really

Answer 3

I just added a new feature request that would give Android support for reading USLT in the ID3 tag. This will enable the native and 3rd party music players to display lyrics. If you want this feature, please star the request below, and post your comments.

http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=32547