Music Business

Google To Add Attribution In Wake Of Lyrics Controversy

Google-logoGoogle announced that it is adding attribution to the song lyrics it publishes in search results. The move came after Genius.com accused the tech giant and third party provider LyricFind of scraping lyrics off its site.

"Here’s something you might not know: music publishers often don’t have digital copies of the lyrics text. In these cases, we—like music streaming services and other companies—license the lyrics text from third parties," wrote Google in rebuttal to the accusations. "We do not crawl or scrape websites to source these lyrics."

The statement went on to promise a change: "To help make it clearer where the lyrics come from, we’ll soon include attribution to the third party providing the digital lyrics text. We will continue to take an approach that respects and compensates rights-holders, and ensures that music publishers and songwriters are paid for their work." 

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