I still have a Netscape e-mail address. When I'm not using CompuServe, that is.

It's worse than that. The labels are shareholders in Spotify. Guess who divvies up the pie before the artists/writers get a share.

They could be worthwhile and share advertising income with lyricists. The two are not mutually exclusive.

I can't remember being asked to pay to view lyrics. But what I do see is sites raking in huge sums of money on the back of lyrics. What's the problem with sharing some of the moolah with the lyricists?

They are asking sites that post lyrics for free to share in the healthy ad revenue the sites generate, as the lyrics don't actually belong to the sites.

On a technicality, the licenses go through the music publishers in this case, not the labels.

Technical detail: the lyrics are the property of the lyricists who assign them to publishers. But you have a point, of course. And it's sad that so many sites have to be brought kicking and screaming to an agreement.

It would probably better if a single body did the global licensing anyway. As it is, only writers with contracts with major publishers will see any returns.