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LRC Maker

What is an LRC file? The synced-lyrics format explained

An LRC file (“LyRiCs”) is a small plain-text file that stores song lyrics together with the time each line is sung. Music players read it to highlight the current line while the song plays — like karaoke, but for your own music library.

What an LRC file looks like

Each line starts with a timestamp in square brackets, followed by the lyric text:

[ar:Artist Name]
[ti:Song Title]
[al:Album Name]
[length:03:21]
[00:00.765]First line of the song
[00:03.909]Second line of the song
[00:07.120]
[00:12.480]A line after a short instrumental break

An empty line (a timestamp with no text) marks an instrumental gap. Text after the timestamp is shown exactly as written, so any language and script works as long as the file is saved as UTF-8.

Timestamps: [mm:ss.xx] or [mm:ss.xxx]

  • [mm:ss.xx] — minutes, seconds and hundredths of a second (e.g. [01:12.37]). The classic format, supported everywhere.
  • [mm:ss.xxx] — milliseconds (e.g. [01:12.367]). More precise; supported by most modern players.
  • Minutes keep counting past 59 — a line at 1 h 2 min 3.456 s is [62:03.456].

LRC Maker writes millisecond timestamps by default and can switch to two-digit timestamps (rounded to the nearest 10 ms) for older players.

Metadata tags

  • [ar:…] artist, [ti:…] title, [al:…] album, [length:mm:ss] song length.
  • [offset:+500] shifts all lines; by convention a positive value shows lyrics 500 ms earlier. LRC Maker applies offsets directly to the timestamps instead, which works in every player.
  • Several timestamps on one line ([00:10.00][00:45.00]Chorus line) repeat that line at each time.

How to use an LRC file in your music player

  1. Give the LRC file the same name as the audio file, e.g. Artist - Title.mp3 and Artist - Title.lrc.
  2. Put both files in the same folder.
  3. Open the song in an LRC-capable player and turn on its lyrics view.

Players and apps that support LRC files include MusicBee, foobar2000 (with a lyrics plugin), AIMP, Poweramp, many Android music players, and numerous car stereos and portable music players. If non-Latin characters look garbled in an older player, re-download the file with the “UTF-8 BOM” option enabled.

How to make an LRC file from a Spotify song

  1. Copy the song link in Spotify (Share → Copy Song Link).
  2. Paste it into LRC Maker and press Get lyrics.
  3. Check the timing in the preview and adjust the offset if needed.
  4. Download the .lrc file and save it next to the audio file with the same name.

Open LRC Maker

Converting lyrics you already have

If you already have synced lyrics as JSON (for example objects with startTimeMs and words) or as LRC text that needs cleaning up, the JSON to LRC converter turns it into a standard LRC file in your browser — nothing is uploaded.

Synced vs. unsynced lyrics

Unsynced lyrics are plain text with no timestamps. They can’t become a proper LRC file without someone timing every line, so LRC Maker offers them as a .txt download instead of inventing timestamps.