These guys are notorious for having stolen lyrics from other sites for many years and only licensing them after legal threats. Funny to see it all come full circle.
That sounds odd to me that any site would own the copyright to lyrics. Wouldnt that be the artist / record company's property?
The value add of Genius isnt so much in the lyrics but in the explanation and context given grom Genius. I have even seen actual artists confirm interpretations and explain some things as well I think Hittman from Dr. Dre's 2001 album was one such artist if I remember correctly.
I do see what you are saying on the other hand but I dont think that lyrics written down from a song are some random websites copyright / property.
I think the main value they add is working to agreggate all the lyrics into one site.
If Google is simply scraping that content from them without permission then that has been litigated many times in court and almost always comes out badly for the "scraper".
The same issue also comes up a lot when dealing with data that can't be copyrighted. For example stock quotes, sports statistics, and maps are all statements of fact and therefore no one can copyright them. However you still have to end up either gathering the information yourself or licensing it from a data provider. Simply scraping it off someone else who has already done one of those two is a quick way to get into legal trouble.
Google uses the lyrics to link you to Google Music, so they end up profiting from the content they scrapped.
Honestly if it was any small business doing this, there would be no harm, but considering Google can place themselves at the top of the search results for lyrics, then it is shady. They basically take Genius content, rank Genius low in the results and place themselves at the top.
I always hated this. It's been historically hard to get easy access to lyrics of songs you've bought! It always made no sense to me that you couldn't publish lyrics of songs.
I think legally you likely have not "bought" a song, you have licensed it. The license includes the right to listen to the song, but not to redistribute either the music or the lyrics.
"Ownership" such as it is for intellectual property is still with the copyright holder(s), which is why it makes sense that you don't have the same rights you would if it were truly "your" song.
To add a little nuance to this, there are two copyrights at play here, the song and the recording. The songwriter (who may or may not be one of the performers) originally owns the rights to the song, but often sells them to a publishing company. The lyrics pertain to the song. The recording is made with a mechanical license to the rights of the song, and a CD is distributed with a license to the recording (owned by the band, unless they recorded as a work-for-hire for their their record label, which is typical).
As a listener, you either own a physical product that happens to have been made with those licenses, or you're listening to a performance, if you're streaming. Neither of these things give you further rights with the song or recording.
This stuff is pretty wacky, and I may have some of those details wrong. I took a class in music industry law a decade ago
Maybe in the context of streaming, but when you buy a CD, AFAIK, you own the copy, but there are limits on what you can do with it because of copyright laws; Just because I own something, doesn’t mean I can make a copy and give it away. That
They’re also notorious for shady SEO practices that got them effectively de-listed a few years back too. The Genius/Google relationship has been rocky, to put it lightly.
Within the cesspool that is lyrics sites in general, Genius seems to be among the more ethical (At least they don't seem to engage in the common practice of showing search results for nonexistent lyrics).
