How do I transcribe the lyrics of a song?

Drop the song into the lyrics transcriber and press Transcribe lyrics. When it finishes, you get the lyrics timed line by line, with verses and choruses marked, to correct and download as LRC, SRT or a lyrics sheet.

How much does it cost?

Transcribing a song uses 2 credits per started minute, shown before you start, and the sign-up credits cover up to 30 minutes of songs. A run that makes nothing gives the credits back.

How accurate is the lyrics transcriber?

On 28 songs made on this site, 7.6% of words were wrong overall and 3.9% in English and Spanish; Chinese songs read less well, mostly fast rap. Line starts landed a median 0.04 seconds from where the line is sung. Clear vocals read best.

Why doesn’t it separate the vocals first?

Because it read worse in our test: the separated vocals had 9.3% of words wrong against 7.6% for the whole song, and separation hurt on 14 of 28 songs. The whole mix is also cheaper to transcribe.

Can I get LRC, word timings or subtitles?

Yes. Download LRC with a time on each line, word-by-word LRC with a time on each word, SRT or VTT for a lyric video, a lyrics sheet as TXT, or JSON with every word’s start and end.

Does it mark the verses and the chorus?

Yes. Lines sung again later are grouped as the chorus and the lines between them as numbered verses. The lyrics sheet shows them as [Verse 1] and [Chorus] headings.

Which languages does the lyrics transcriber know?

The language is detected by itself, or you can choose it. We tested English, Spanish and Chinese songs, and many more languages are supported.

Which files can I use, and how long?

MP3, WAV, M4A, AAC, FLAC and OGG, and music videos such as MP4, MOV and WEBM, whose sound alone uploads; up to 3 hours of audio.

Can I paste a link to a song?

Upload the file instead: save the song to your device first, then drop it on the lyrics transcriber.

Can I fix a wrong word?

Yes. Click a word to hear it, then correct the line; it keeps its timing, your edit is saved, and every file you download afterwards uses it.

Can I make a karaoke track?

Download word-by-word LRC for the lyrics, and take the instrumental from the vocal remover.

Does the lyrics transcriber work on a phone?

Yes, in the phone’s browser: pick a song from your files and the lyrics light up as it plays.

Lyrics Transcriber: Transcribe Song Lyrics

TXT, LRC, word LRC, SRT, VTT, JSON: 6 files
of words right on our English and Spanish songs: 96%
median line timing error: 0.04 s
credits per minute: 2
of songs with the sign-up credits: Up to 30 min
in our accuracy test: 28 songs

How do you transcribe song lyrics?

To transcribe song lyrics, drop the song, or a music video, into the lyrics transcriber and press Transcribe lyrics. The whole track is transcribed with a time for every word, then cut into lines and grouped into verses and choruses. The lyrics light up as the song plays, a click on a word plays from it, and you download LRC, SRT or a lyrics sheet.

Song lyrics to text in three steps

From a song to lyrics text: drop the song, check the lines, take the file.

Drop the song
MP3, WAV, M4A, FLAC or a music video such as MP4. Pick the language if you know it, or let it be detected.
Watch the lyrics light up
Each line is timed and each word marked as it is sung. Click a word to hear it, and correct a line in place.
Download the lyrics
A lyrics sheet with verses and choruses, LRC or word-by-word LRC, SRT or VTT subtitles, or JSON with every word’s time.

A lyrics transcriber tested on 28 songs

We measured this lyrics transcriber before writing a word of this page, and the measurement decided how it works.

Small birds on overhead wires like notes on a staff

The whole song, measured against separated vocals

We transcribed 28 songs made on this site two ways: the whole mix, and the vocals separated first. The whole mix came out more accurate: 7.6% of words wrong against 9.3%, and 3.9% against 6.3% in English and Spanish. Separation helped on 5 songs, by 0.3 to 2.9 points, and hurt on 14, mostly rap, rock and dance tracks, so this tool transcribes the song as it is, at 2 credits a minute.

Lyrics that light up as the song plays

The lyrics transcriber plays your song and shows its lyrics as it goes: the line being sung lights up and the word being sung is marked. Click any word to play from it, which makes a misheard word quick to find and fix.

Verses and choruses marked

Lines sung again later are grouped as the chorus, and the lines between them as verses, numbered in order. In our test, 96.7% of the sung lines landed in the right kind of section, chorus or verse. A chorus heard a little differently the second time, or a line split by a breath in one chorus, still counts as the chorus.

Synced LRC and word-by-word LRC

LRC puts a time before each line, which music players use to scroll lyrics. Word-by-word LRC times every word, which karaoke players light word by word. Line starts land a median 0.04 seconds from where the line is sung, and 98.5% within half a second.

Six files from one song

One transcription makes them all: a lyrics sheet with [Verse 1] and [Chorus] headings, LRC, word-by-word LRC, SRT and VTT for a lyric video, and JSON with every line and word timed. Download another later from My lyrics with no second run.

Correct a line, keep its timing

Fix a word and the line keeps its start and end, so the lines around it and the LRC stay in step. Your edits are saved to the song, and every file you download afterwards uses them.

Lyrics transcriber samples

Each song was written and made for this page, then transcribed by this lyrics transcriber and shown exactly as it came out. Press play to watch the lyrics light up, switch between the lyrics sheet, LRC and SRT, and see how many words were heard right against the lyrics as sung.

Lyrics transcriber guide: accuracy, LRC and sections

What a lyrics transcriber does

A lyrics transcriber listens to a song and writes down what is sung, with the time of every word. Lyrics differ from speech: lines repeat, words stretch over several notes, and instruments play under the voice. So the words alone are not enough; the transcription has to be cut into lines where the singer phrases them, and the lines grouped into the song’s verses and choruses.

This lyrics transcriber does both. It transcribes the song, cuts the words into lines at the end of each sung phrase, and marks the lines that come back as the chorus. You get lyrics that read like a lyrics sheet and stay timed like a karaoke file.

Why we transcribe the whole song

Many tools that transcribe song lyrics separate the vocals first, so we tested it. We took 28 songs made on this site, whose lyrics and line times we know, and transcribed each one twice: the whole mix, and the vocals separated by our vocal remover. Then we counted the words wrong against the lyrics as sung.

The whole mix won: 7.6% of words wrong against 9.3% after separation. In English and Spanish it was 3.9% against 6.3%; in Chinese the two were close, 21.2% against 20.5%, and a fast Chinese rap was hard either way. Separation helped on 5 songs, by 0.3 to 2.9 points, and hurt on 14, by up to 12.7 points on a fast drill track: it leaves faint traces of the instruments in the voice, and those were misheard as words.

Our songs have clear vocals, so treat these numbers as our measurement, not a promise for every recording. A song whose voice is buried deep under instruments may read worse. If you only need the instrumental, the vocal remover separates it.

LRC and word-by-word LRC

LRC is a plain text file with a time in brackets before each line, such as [00:19.04]. Music players and car stereos read it to scroll the lyrics as the song plays. Word-by-word LRC adds a time before every word, which karaoke players use to fill the words in as they are sung.

Keep the file next to the song with the same name, for example song.mp3 and song.lrc, and most players load it by themselves.

1Download LRC for scrolling lyrics in a music player.
2Download word-by-word LRC for karaoke and sing-along screens.
3Download SRT or VTT to put the lyrics on a lyric video in a desktop editor.
4Copy the lyrics, without headings, for a release form, or download the lyrics sheet for a songbook.

Correct the words in the editor before downloading: every file uses your edits.

Lyrics for releasing your songs

When you release a song, release platforms usually ask for its lyrics, and synced lyrics let listeners follow along. Transcribe song lyrics from your finished mix, check the spelling of names and invented words, then press Copy lyrics: it copies the words alone, as release forms ask. The lyrics sheet you download keeps the [Verse 1] and [Chorus] headings for rehearsals and songbooks.

Rap, harmonies and distortion

Fast rap is the hardest case: in our test, English rap ranged from 1.4% to 19.1% of words wrong, and Chinese rap was harder still. Stacked harmonies, heavy distortion and long reverb tails also blur words. The lines stay timed even when a word is wrong, so a correction in the editor is quick.

Several singers at once are written as one line, lead and harmonies together, and a duet’s lines come in the order they are sung.

Lines and sections

A line ends where the singer ends a phrase, which the transcription marks with a full stop or a pause; a comma or a short breath inside a line keeps it whole. In our test the lyrics transcriber found 95.9% of the line starts. A chorus is found by repetition, so a song whose chorus is sung only once is shown as verses.