---
task_categories:
- automatic-speech-recognition
language:
- en
tags:
- music
- lyrics
- evaluation
- benchmark
- transcription
pretty_name: MUSDB-ALT
license: cc-by-nc-sa-4.0
dataset_info:
  features:
  - name: name
    dtype: string
  - name: text
    dtype: string
  - name: text_tagged
    dtype: string
  - name: lines
    list:
    - name: start
      dtype: float64
    - name: end
      dtype: float64
    - name: text
      dtype: string
    - name: text_tagged
      dtype: string
  splits:
  - name: test
    num_bytes: 141507
    num_examples: 39
  download_size: 80501
  dataset_size: 141507
configs:
- config_name: default
  data_files:
  - split: test
    path: data/test.jsonl
---

# Dataset Card for MUSDB-ALT
This dataset contains long-form lyric transcripts following the Jam-ALT [guidelines](https://huggingface.co/datasets/jamendolyrics/jam-alt/blob/main/GUIDELINES.md) 
for the test set of the dataset [MUSDB18](https://sigsep.github.io/datasets/musdb.html), with line-level timings.
There are two versions of each transcript at the song and line level - `text` contains the normal transcript, and `text_tagged` contains the transcript with non-lexical
vocables enclosed in tags `<nl>` and `</nl>`.

## Dataset Details
The dataset was constructed manually, based on the [MUSDB18 lyrics extension](https://zenodo.org/records/3989267) as a starting point.
The lyrics extension contains transcripts of the 45 English language songs out of the 50 in the MUSDB18 test set.
We annotated 39 of those 45 songs, excluding 6 for the following reasons:

- Signe Jakobsen - What Have You Done To Me : Three overlapping vocal lines that could not be separated into lead and backing vocals
- PR - Happy Daze : Vocal content primarily from highly processed vocal samples
- PR - Oh No : Vocal content primarily from highly processed vocal samples
- Skelpolu - Resurrection : Vocal content primarily from highly processed vocal samples
- Timboz - Pony : Lyrics unintelligble due to screamed enunciation style
- Triviul feat The Fiend - Widows : Three overlapping vocal lines that could not be separated into lead and backing vocals

### Dataset Description
 **Paper:** The dataset was introduced in the paper [Exploiting Music Source Separation for Automatic Lyrics Transcription with Whisper"](https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.15514)
  published at the Workshop [Artificial Intelligence For Music](https://ai4musicians.org/2025icme.html) at ICME 2025
- **Funding:** This work was supported by InnovateUK \[Grant Number 1010280\]
- **License:** https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.en


## Citation

**BibTeX:**
```
@inproceedings{syed-2025-mss-alt,
  author       = {Jaza Syed and
                  Ivan Meresman-Higgs and
                  Ond{\v{r}}ej C{\'{\i}}fka and
                  Mark Sandler},
  title        = {Exploiting Music Source Separation for Automatic Lyrics Transcription with {Whisper}},
  booktitle    = {2025 {IEEE} International Conference on Multimedia and Expo Workshops (ICMEW)},
  publisher    = {IEEE},
  year         = {2025},
  note         = {In press}
}
```