Rap Genius alleges that their competitors are using the same tactics. Will those sites also get the same scrutiny? Perhaps now would be a good time for a new lyric site run by some nice bland people to go on the offensive and rise to the top.
One last thing to keep in mind: Rapgenius was an unlicensed lyric site. They weren't playing ball on either side of the fence. Let's hope that a lyric site emerges that provides lyrics with at least acceptable, non-distracting ads, and serves licensed content. I really think merely going by this strategy will get you ranked high on Google.
Rap Genius was originally called Rap Exegesis, and while it has a lot of rap lyrics it is a community supported text annotation site, with an ambition far beyond a lyric repository. They have a great deal of content beyond rap, or even lyrics in general. They have poetry and literature, announcements, and press releases (I'd love to see them make a Rap Genius page of Ulysses with the contents of Ulysses Annotated). They have a platform and are building a community. That's why it's attractive to VCs, and that's why it's something beyond the eyesores one mostly lands on searching for lyrics.
These companies(RG, azlyrics, etc) are making money where their main product is the creative work of someone else. Damn straight that other person deserves a cut of the profits because without them there is no site.
No, that's exactly how the world works for luxury items like music; demand drives, not supply. What the seller wants to charge means absolutely nothing if demand is elastic and consumers can simply stop buying. Demand sets the price, not the seller. Creators can set whatever price they like, and consumers can and will ignore them; if you want to sell something you have to set a price the market will actually bear.
> Damn straight that other person deserves a cut of the profits because without them there is no site.
No they don't; they got paid to write the song, they're done. The notion that a person deserves to be paid forever in secondary markets where people trade their creations is a perverse and absurd notion that exists only in the messed up modern world; it's wrong and it's stupid. You as an artist do not deserve to be paid every time someone makes a copy of your art; period. If I paint a copy of a Picasso, I don't owe the Picasso family anything and the same should apply to any other creation. Copies are not theft and the artist doesn't deserve anything.
>No they don't; they got paid to write the song, they're done. The notion that a person deserves to be paid forever in secondary markets where people trade their creations is a perverse and absurd notion that exists only in the messed up modern world; it's wrong.
Who is this magically being that pays the writer to write the song exactly? It isn't a secondary market it's a primary market. The song writer has created something(A song!) and the site wants to use that song. They are dealing with the song writer or copyright holder that is a first sale.
That person deserves to be paid for what they have created which is what this is. Your job wouldn't exist without that belief and neither would mine.
I never said they did, please do try and comprehend before simply repeating yourself.
> That person deserves to be paid for what they have created which is what this is.
False.
> Your job wouldn't exist without that belief and neither would mine.
This is a belief you hold, not a fact.
Whether or not a person deserves to get paid forever for their work is irrelevant to this discussion... The point is that someone is getting paid forever in this situation -- either the original songwriter or the owners of the lyrics site. I'll accept for the sake of argument that it shouldn't be possible for a person to monetize his or her work in perpetuity -- so then why the hell should it be allowable for an unrelated third party to do so?
Ok, fair question. I didn't claim a person, be it first or third party, shouldn't be able to monetize anything; I said they don't deserve it, not that they can't do it. I'm disputing the sense of entitlement displayed by the use of the word deserve. No one, whether the creator nor the third party, is entitled to consumers money.
In the vast majority of cases this is wrong. Most songwriters do not get paid to write songs. They get paid only when they receive royalties on the reproduction of their song.
This is good for society because it means that the songs that everyone likes will provide the most reward--so songwriters have a strong incentive to write the best songs they can.
Clearly SOME people are willing to pay for the right to use lyrics, ie. singers, record labels, etc. Just because a single individual, ex. rapgenius, doesn't want to pay for the music/lyrics, which they legally are obliged to do, doesn't mean that music/lyrics have no market value. There is a market value which has been established, and which people pay for. It just means that if they don't pay for the lyrics, they are stealing it.
Well since I didn't say that, you're wrong.
We agree.
> When someone else takes what someone does, it diminishes the value of that opportunity.
No it doesn't, those people wouldn't have paid anyway. Copying is not theft. This is the same tired argument the MPAA's been trying to make and it's just a sign of the establishment not adjusting to the new reality that distribution is not a profitable industry anymore.
You can't know all of the ways they will possibly make money from the content. Justin Bieber may want to charge Apple more for including vetted lyrics in iTunes. But why would Apple give Justin Bieber money when they can just copy the content from Rap Genius? Or cut a deal with Rap Genius for a feed?
> distribution is not a profitable industry anymore
This is where you're missing the point. You see the price as paying for distribution, but it's really about the value of the content. Historically, the two were inextricably linked by a physical medium. Now they are completely separate things with different prices and costs, and are almost unrelated to one another. Just because one goes close to zero, doesn't mean the other does, too.
Art doesn't have to be a business and art will be created regardless of whether artists can profit in perpetuity from their work. The notion that ideas and words are property and can be owned is perverse doublespeak meant to trick people into transferring their gut instincts about physical property onto things that quite simply are not property.
Performers should make money from performing, not being paid forever because the government created artificial monopolies on words and ideas.
Commenting on established artworks with a cute little javascript popup doesn't add anything to the original art. If I want to check lyrics, I am looking for the lyrics, not a popup that shows a picture of a ham when I hover over 'ham'. RG doesn't even have good content, just a bunch of smartass nonsense and obvious comments.
Never said they didn't, try understanding what was sad before flying off the handle.
(Seriously though, this is something absolutely different)
Is that close enough for you to see the similarity, or do I need to explain how songs and poems are functionally indistinguishable and further how poetry and prose is functionally indistinguishable; and therefore how written works are functionally indistinguishable and if you support copyright in one but not the other your perspective is logically untenable?
Or perhaps you'd like to explain to me why a poem should lose its written copyright rights when someone sings it.