It's not so much a problem of bandwidth as brainwidth, if you can catch my meaning.

It takes only a second to unthinkingly copy and paste lyrics from some other web site onto this one, but please think about the inconvenience you are causing someone else if the lyrics you post are EXACTLY THE SAME as another copy of lyrics that has already been posted.

Please try to put yourself in the shoes of someone who WANTS lyrics for any reason—whether it's to "harvest" them for the DigiTrad; or because you want to learn the song and sing it in your own gigs; or because you're just curious about the origin of a song and want to trace it back to its roots, or as far as you can; or because you just want to understand what somebody's singing in a recording you have.

What will that person likely do if he finds, say, ten copies of a song at Mudcat?

He/she will have to compare all ten copies, that's what.

If you want to learn the song, you'll want to select the best version, right? (However you define "best.")

If you want to understand the history of a song, you'll have to understand how the different versions differ, and why, right?

If you want to understand the recording you have, you'll have to figure out which version (if any) corresponds to your version.

To do this, you have to read all the versions.

Doing this uses up—to use the word I just coined—brainwidth.

(OK, maybe someone else coined it before I did. But I coined it independently.)

And what do you get when you get when you compare ten different copies of a song at Mudcat? Do you think you would find ten different versions?

Probably not. You'd be lucky to find two or three distinctly different versions. Mostly you'd find that the same version has been repeated several times.

In other words, you'd find that comparing them has been a waste of your time.

That sometimes pisses a person off.