Apple Music Lyrics Smarten Up With Genius
12 October 2018 - 1:30AM
Dow Jones News
By Anne Steele
Apple Music is about to get a little better with words.
The No. 2 music-streaming service world-wide will now display
lyrics drawn from popular online music encyclopedia Genius. Under
the same agreement, Apple Inc.'s music service also becomes the
exclusive Web player for Genius in a deal that could help drive
more subscribers to the service.
Genius began as a site for hip-hop fans to provide annotations
and interpretations of songs but has become a trusted online
resource for lyrics in numerous genres.
The deal, whose terms weren't disclosed, is the latest
partnership for Apple Music as it looks for ways to draw more
paying customers to its service. The company in August began
offering six months of its music service free to Verizon
Communications Inc. customers, and it has recently spent heavily on
marketing, including TV ads in the U.S. during National Football
League games.
Apple Music subscribers checking out lyrics on Genius's website
or app are now able to play any song in full from the song page.
Fans who aren't subscribers will get a 30-second song preview and
then a prompt to subscribe to listen in full.
With Genius reaching more than 100 million unique visitors each
month -- 73% of whom don't currently pay for a music subscription,
according to comScore -- the potential new audience for Apple is
significant.
The deal is also likely to be welcomed by fans and artists, who
have frequently highlighted inaccuracies in Apple Music's lyrics
offerings, which can be displayed for many but not all songs on the
service. The company hasn't disclosed details on how it has sourced
its lyrics until now, but it has previously posted job openings for
a team of lyrics curators.
In August, the National Basketball Association's Phoenix Suns
tweeted at Apple Music a flub in the lyrics listed for Travis
Scott's "Sicko Mode." A line in which Drake raps, "See the shots
that I took, wet like I'm Book" -- a reference to Suns shooting
guard Devin Booker -- Apple had written as "Wet, like I'm
booked."
In January, Hayley Williams from rock band Paramore responded to
a confused fan on Twitter asking about lyrics for her song
"Rose-Colored Boy": "apple music got a lot of my lyrics wrong but
im not mad just disappointed. @Genius is typically correct, if yall
ever need."
Both instances have since been corrected on Apple Music.
"We've been hearing a lot from fans of both Genius and Apple
Music that they've wanted us to work together," said Genius chief
strategy officer Ben Gross.
Genius, incorporated as Genius Media Group Inc., began in 2009
as Rap Genius. It has since expanded beyond both rap and lyrics,
producing video series and live events and allowing artists to
share notes about the creation of their music across genres.
Artists from Chance the Rapper and Eminem to Camila Cabello, Cardi
B and Lin-Manuel Miranda annotate their songs and engage with fans
on the site.
The lyrics on Genius are generated in a format similar to
Wikipedia's. Most are transcribed by fans supervised by a small
"community staff" of full-time employees who grant and take away
editing privileges and moderate disputes. Lyrics and commentary
provided by verified artists are marked with a badge.
Genius has partnered with Spotify Technology SA since 2016 for
the service's Behind the Lyrics feature, which offers some lyrics
and music trivia for around 3,500 songs, out of tens of millions
total on the service. That was the same year Spotify ended its
relationship with Musixmatch, which had been supplying its lyrics
service; Spotify doesn't currently offer lyrics for the majority of
its catalog.
Write to Anne Steele at Anne.Steele@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 11, 2018 10:15 ET (14:15 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.