Google is now the best search engine for song lyrics

Tired of landing on dodgy sites every time you look up song lyrics? Me too. Luckily, Google is doing something about that.

The search giant has inked a deal with Toronto-based LyricFind to source and show lyrics right in search results. It’s available from today in the US and should roll out globally as its partnership reportedly includes international licenses.

All you need to do to see lyrics is search for the name of the song followed by ‘lyrics’ on Google. The engine will also display a list of alternative results of songs with the same name by other artists.

The deal also brings lyrics to Google Play Music. It isn’t yet clear how they’ll be integrated into the service, but it’s likely that songs will now be accompanied by lyrics on Play Music’s various apps. A reverse search built into the player would probably be pretty useful too.

LyricFind co-founder Darryl Ballantyne told Billboard that he expects the partnership to give rise to “a significant revenue stream.” He noted, “I can’t get into the rates, but we expect it to be millions of dollars generated for publishers and songwriters as a result of this. It’s all based on usage. Royalties are paid based on the number of times a lyric is viewed. The more it’s viewed, the more publishers get paid.”

This will almost certainly kill traffic to sites that have built their businesses on indexing lyrics; there are a number of them that do so with and without licenses. That means they’ll have to find other ways of delivering value to visitors.

Genius attempts to do so by inviting users to discuss the meanings and inspiration behind their favorite songs, as well as beaming that content to Spotify. But it’ll be interesting to see if it can stay afloat now that Google has essentially negated the need for people to visit sites for lyrics.

Via Billboard