See how CouchSurfing turned into B-Corporation after being denied their 501(c)(3) charity status: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CouchSurfing#2011_incorporation
They were a non-profit, for the first 8 years.
What is it with lyric sites and ringtone ads? LyricWiki went the same way.
So lyric sites have to supplement traditional banners with, well, those ringtone ads.
In the case of SongMeanings, we're doing ringtone ads because our licensing agreements are very expensive. It's not cheap doing what we're doing. We're proud to be licensed, sure, but again, it's very expensive.
Heads up -- if you become a member at SongMeanings, you'll actually see fewer advertisements. It's our way of saying thanks to loyal users.
I'm certainly open ears to suggestions on how to pay for licensing while not doing ringtone adverts. Or any other suggestions on how to improve SM, too.
Mike SongMeanings
Can anyone assert ownership over and derive commercial benefit from a data source that traces its origins to volunteer contributors? What would be legally required to do that?
Many of us in the '90s were burned by the CDDB/Gracenote debacle, which was my first unpleasant encounter with the problem. My experience contributing lyrics to songmeanings.net, which used to be a community-run/crowdsourced lyrics repository, not full of pop-up ringtone ads, was similarly negative.
Since then, I contribute only to nonprofits that seem to have some long-term credibility with their data licensing and governance, such as Wikipedia, Musicbrainz, and OpenStreetMap. In principle I'd contribute to a for-profit if it were really convincing about its long-term good faith (and provided data export), but the bar is high.