Your move, Genius.
What you need to know
- On June 17, Genius accused Google of stealing lyrics from its website.
- Google’s published a blog post outlining how it shows lyrics on Google Search.
- The company will now credit third-party sources it gets lyrics from.
On Monday, June 17, lyrics website Genius made a bold accusation — it accused Google of scraping its website for song lyrics, stealing them, and then displaying them on Google Search. Just one day later, Google’s responded with a blog post titled, “How we help you find lyrics in Google Search.”
Google starts off the post explaining how song lyrics show up in Search saying:
Lyrics can appear in information boxes and on Knowledge Panels in Search when you’re looking for songs or lyrics. While we do this to help you find that information quickly, we also ensure that the songwriters are paid for their creative work. To do that, we pay music publishers for the right to display lyrics, since they manage the rights to these lyrics on behalf of the songwriters.
As for where those lyrics come from — the main issue here — Google says that it gets the lyrics from third parties. Furthermore, Google reassures that, “the lyrics you see in information boxes on Search come directly from lyrics content providers.”
It’s suspected that one of the third parties Google works with was stealing lyrics from Genius, and as a result of this, Google notes that it’s asked that third party to “investigate the issue to ensure that they’re following industry best practices.”
Lastly, in an effort to be completely transparent, Google will soon credit the third party providing song lyrics when someone searches for them.
Google has been accused of stealing content by lyrics site Genius
