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I wonder if there is a database or technique of collecting the timings of a song?
I found this post linking to MusicXML. However, it seems MusicXML is for sheet music. I am looking for data relating to music of the more general variety.
I'm looking for something that gives the lyrics of a song as well as the time in the song a lyric occurs.
Can anyone suggest anything?
(Not a very practical answer, but maybe can get the ball rolling...)
If you can create a list Youtube links to the songs or albums you want, you can download the captions (subtitles). These have a timestamp along with the lyrics.
With YouTube you can search for videos with captions. Unfortunately, I found that many are listed with captions but actually don't have any meaningful text.
Here is an example of one video with good captions (link).
You can see the transcript by going to "More" and then "Transcript".
One tool to do download captions is called Google2SRT.
What is Google2SRT? Google2SRT is a tool that can download "not embedded" subtitles (Closed Captions - CC) from YouTube and former Google Video and convert them to a standard format (SubRip - SRT) supported by most video players.
There are some online tools, too, such as keepsubs.com and yousub.net (although questionable how reliable).
Also, a Firefox add-on.
You could also use OpenSubtitles.org to download subtitles soundtracks or concerts.
I think what you are looking for are .lrc files aka scrollable lyrics
