Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/06/17/lyrics-website-used-clever-enc.html
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When I worked for the city one of my jobs was to check paper maps for errors. I’d always find one. I was told that they all put in errors to prevent other map companies from copying them. Kind of messed up drivers, but all I could do was point out the mistake and send it back to them.
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Does Genius have actually lyrics, or are they just another shitty aggregator forwarding along bullshit machine-transcribed “lyrics”.
Sorry, “lyrics”.
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I used to license TV metadata for linear and OTT TV listings. A significant portion of TV metadata from large and small sources is scraped. Large content providers will often buy this data from scrapers because they can’t keep track of the 10,000 times, sites and channels their shows appear on. Google’s data provider has some warranty that they got the content legally and/or indemnifies Google, but Google knows what the vendor is doing. It is don’t ask don’t tell in the metadata industry.
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This is pretty amazing, A+ for Genius living up to their namesake.
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I always assumed they were a user-submitted lyrics site, like many others, but that is perhaps just their line-by-line “context” stuff
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It is crazy how much info google search just serves directly now so that you don’t have to leave their site… Very convenient, but also seems like a deeply anti-competitive move.
And just to remind “Genius” started as “Rap Genius” and doesn’t have a great reputation when it comes to respecting copyright either.
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There’s a long history of cartographers doing that:
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“Users” for whom English is a second or third language, it seems. I’ve found all of those sites so awful (and they all have identical copies of the same clearly stupid and wrong “lyrics”) that I don’t even bother looking up lyrics online anymore. And Google (clearly) and Pandora are just scraping and serving the same crap.
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Copyright traps are not the only thing that results in strange things showing up in maps. You can often find “towns” on the map that are really long-forgotten rail sidings or junctions (or, in some cases, if the installations are still in place, the railroad will still use that name).
Other times, the old place names are essentially ghost towns, and sometimes have been swallowed up. Alpine, Illinois is a good example of this; it was destroyed by fire in 1912 and not rebuilt. After World War II, a few new homes started to be built in the area, followed by suburban sprawl in the 1980s and 1990s, when Orland Park annexed the entire site.
For a long time, there was an area near Lake Calumet in Chicago that showed phantom streets in Google Earth. That turned out to be a planned subdivision that was never built.
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Ah, but do they own their unique sequence of straight and curly apostrophes?
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As usual, the musicians are out of the equation and get to enjoy jack squat.
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They are both. Anybody can go in and make edits and corrections, or submit missing lyrics. Users can also annotate lyrics to better explain them (and these have the ability to be up/down voted.
It’s actually a really good service. I tend to trust it much more than other shitty aggregators out there since there’s a pretty passionate community behind it.
What is that supposed to mean? The hip hop community has long embraced the Internet, and accurately transcribed (and explained) rap lyrics can be notoriously difficult to find. It shouldn’t be surprising that this was how it got its start.
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Us̖̯̰͈ͅͅe͙̮̞̺̳̟ͅ ̮͉͕̹Z̥̻͍͓̩a̲̲͓l͙̗̞g̩o̞̖͇̗̠̤̻ ͍͓̪̤̩te̟͕x̣̺͚̮t̩̹̝͍,͈̻̺̖̠ͅ ̳ḛ̬̻̻͔̗ͅs̘p͉͔͎̼̙̞͙e̘͍͔c̤͚̫̟̪̯̥i̮̫̞a͓͕͍̯̻͈ͅl̝̥̜̳͉̩l̖̹̼̠y̜ ͓̺f͙̣o̪͖̱r̗̝̟̫̠̩ ͚̳̖̪̳H̼̮̥̳̙͍͍e̟a͕̱̣v̞̹͍͔͍̺͉y̗̩̫͚ ̰̖̥̬̤M̬̹̰e͚̱̼t̻̞̹̳̬al͎.͉̤̬̬̲
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I wasn’t suggesting otherwise. Just reminding people that “Genius” used to be called “Rap Genius,” in case people forgot they were the same company.
And I was referring to the settlements/licensing deals that the site made with music publishers who claimed they were infringing on their intellectual property.
And while I’m at it, it’s also worth noting that the three founders of the company are complete tech bro idiots.
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“We would never do what you are saying that we are doing! Wait. We are? Well… we are stopping now and getting rid of the guys that were doing it. Trust us. We wouldn’t lie to you twice.”
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Isn’t that usually the case?
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You have a point… perhaps it goes without saying 
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Every lyric I’ve ever looked up, there or anywhere else, since the olden days when actual human music fans put lyrics their actual fan-sites has been flagrantly wrong anyway
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