Application rejected due to 8.5: Use of protected third-party material

Question

I developed an application for searching for texts, spent more than a month adding and organizing them in a database, yesterday the Apple review team rejected my application due to the use of protected third-party material.

The use of third-party copyrighted material requires documentation of evidence of your right to use such content in your application.

What should I do in this case, should I contact each artist, telling him if I can add his lyrics to my application?!?! What do they mean documented evidence ? I feel like they are asking for an impossible thing. I can’t agree that all efforts made over a month have disappeared! Have you encountered such a deviation before? And is there a real possibility? Here are 2 screenshots of the application (sent / selected by the Apple review team):

What about this: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lyrics-lite-lyricfind/id310626563?mt=8 And that one: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lyrics+/id376969803 ? mt = 8

Not mistaken ?!

Answer 1

A quick look at Wikipedia shows that you need a license to publish:

Currently, there are many websites containing lyrics. This proposal, however, is controversial, as some sites include copyrighted texts offered without permission of the owner. United States. The Music Publishers Association (MPA), which represents the notes of the companies, launched a legal campaign against such sites in December 2005, MPA president, Lauren Keyser, said the free lyric network sites are "completely illegal" and wanted some website operators to be imprisoned in jail.

Thus, this is not a false opinion from Apple, they even protect you in some way from being held liable by the law firm (for using copyrighted material without permission).

As for other text apps on the AppStore: I assume they have a license. At least LyricFind does, since you can get a license to publish texts from them.