Music Publishers Association Pauses Takedown Action Against Rap Genius
Just days after the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) named popular lyrics annotation site Rap Genius to the top of a list of 50 unlicensed sites targeted for take down, the trade group has pressed pause on taking action against the site.
A statement read:
"NMPA and Rap Genius have agreed to meet in an effort to find an acceptable solution for both songwriters and the website. The parties are hopeful that these talks will be productive and will lead to a resolution that will benefit everyone. NMPA has temporarily tolled the time to respond to its takedown notice and to file any copyright claims to allow time for the parties to meet."
Responding indirectly to the original NMPA takedown notice, co-founder Ilan Zechory had maintained that Rap Genius actually adds value to lyrics with their verified annotations. “The lyrics sites the N.M.P.A. refers to simply display song lyrics, while Rap Genius has crowdsourced annotations that give context to all the lyrics line by line, and tens of thousands of verified annotations directly from writers and performers," he said in a statement.
Last week, Rap Genius also announced a deal had been reached with major music publisher Sony ATV.
End of the day, the majority of incoming traffic to Rap Genius is still search driven. They would be nothing without the lyrics. Don’t forget that.
Yes and the earth goes ’round the sun, so what? The real story here is that after 15 years of trying to sue out of existence every online service that makes money while giving people the content they’re looking for, this one little corner of the entertainment industry may have finally figured out that simply licensing content to the profitable, innovative services is a win-win, as long as the deals aren’t running the services out of business. Time will tell if this isn’t just going to go sour, but I for one find this development encouraging.