Google will show the original source of the lyrics on its search results

Earlier this week, lyrics site Genius accused Google of uploading song lyrics and publishing them on its search platform. Genius told the Wall Street Journal that this caused traffic to its site to drop. Google, which initially denied any wrongdoing but later said it was investigating the issue, addressed the controversy in a blog today.

The company said it will start including attribution to third-party partners who provide keywords in its information boxes. When the Wall Street Journal first contacted Google, it told the newspaper that the lyrics it displayed were licensed by the partners and not by it, but that some lyrics (which are displayed in information boxes or cards called “knowledge panels” at the top of song search results) included Genius’ code-based watermark system. Genius said that over the past two years it has repeatedly contacted Google about the issue. In a letter sent in April, it told Google that it was not only violating the site's terms of service, but that it was also violating antitrust law, a serious allegation at a time when Google and other big tech companies are facing antitrust investigations by government regulators.

After the WSJ article was first published, Google issued a statement saying it was investigating the issue and would stop working with song providers that “do not support good practices.” In a blog post today, Satyajeet Salgar, a product group manager at Google Search, wrote that the company is paying “music publishers for the right to display lyrics, because they manage the rights to these songs on behalf of songwriters.” Because many music publishers license the text of their lyrics from third-party lyric content providers, Google works with these companies.

The company said that the lyrics it displays in search results are not sourced from the sites that publish them, but rather come directly from the lyrics content providers, and are automatically updated as we receive new lyrics and corrections on a regular basis. In the future, Google will begin referring to the company that submitted the words in search results, saying: “We will continue to follow an approach that respects and compensates rights holders, and ensures that publishers and musicians are paid for their work.”