Rap Genius Raises $40M, Changes Name To Genius | Hacker News Reader

Rap Genius Raises $40M, Changes Name To Genius

techcrunch.com

177 pointsyurisagalov107 comments

Great for Rap Genius, but every time I read something about them, I think of this interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NAzQPll7Lo

Please tell me this was some kind of parody. A stage full of impossibly lame "bro-schtick" cartoon characters and a live-action anime-style interviewer complete with absurd hair. I wouldn't have trusted these clowns to heat up a can of beans let alone put them in charge of millions of dollars and then "value" their company at an amount of money that could build house and feed a medium sized city for a decade.

I guess that goes to show what I know since they've executed pretty well and can apparently evaluate literature.

Maybe I'm just getting old but man is it depressing.

Silicon Valley and general startup culture these days has very little actual substance. If you don't have actual substance you have to substitute something else for it. I can't really think of words to describe what the substitute is but that linked video does a pretty good job.

I'm with you. I'd prefer to maintain my current lifestyle if "success" meant having to act as douchey as these ass-clowns.

This is the end-result of privilege meeting a lack of consequences.

It's not because you are an old man. Compare that talk with the one with the Google Founders: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wdnp_7atZ0M

Rap Genius needs so much humble pie, they'd choke to death on it.

What sickening, repulsive little wankers. It feels a bit surreal seeing what people will invest in, or enjoy.

Thats what cocaine does to you kids....

I think of http://valleywag.gawker.com/rap-genius-cofounder-resigns-ove...

This makes me embarrassed to work in tech in SF. :(

The only problem here is that RG is classified as a "tech" company. Its a legitimate business, but they don't sell technology, and neither does technology make or break them.

They happen to use web technology, but how is that different from the bakery next door that happens to use a payroll program or allows you to order online and home deliver? Or a company like Walmart (where arguably technology is a part of what makes them successful)?

The standards for what companies are classified as tech companies right now are extremely inconsistent. In my view, Rap Genius is a for-profit fanclub, not a tech company. Similarly, AirBnB is a travel and accommodation agent, not a tech company.

I define a tech company as a company for whom advanced technology is what they develop and sell (either as a product or service) - Microsoft, Google, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, Dropbox - all qualify.

Merely using technology doesn't make it a tech company, every business in the modern world uses technology, it doesn't make them "tech" companies.

I've long argued this same point. Somewhere along the line "startup" become synonymous with "tech startup" and everyone seemed to decide this is the way it'll work. There are plenty of elements of these startups that are as important - if not more important - than tech.

This is actually a really important distinction you're making and one that is lost in the HN echo chamber.

Not all tech is like this. Consider the most successful tech company that exists, Google.

Both founders are extremely humble, cogent, and respectful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wdnp_7atZ0M

It goes to show that even the most extreme success and fame, can still be processed without destroying your ethics.

I'd argue that very few tech companies are like RapGenius.

The new wave of "X service on the web" companies are not tech companies, they are "X service" companies, whether that X is travel, music, laundry, home cleaning, etc. And since the problems they are solving are trivial and not remotely technologically challenging, they can afford to have this kind of arrogant culture that would never fly at a legitimate tech company where the difficulty of problems being solved forces at least some degree of humility on the problem-solver.

Yep. If these people didn't exist, we'd have to invent them.

I've talked to Rap Genius directly before about some work they needed done and they were all business; Completely professional. I wouldn't give this interview too much weight. Their idea, adding value to existing knowledge through meta-content, is pretty solid IMHO.

The original Business Insider article, with verified annotations from the Genius co-founders: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-inside-story-of-how-rap-g...

(and the HN comments page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8022076)

Also, we've been doing embeddable pages for a long time now! For example, see our embed with the Alantic on Google's self-driving cars back in May: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/05/google...

When looking at the article on BI, I feel the annotations take away from the flow of the article, rather than adding to it. I find myself constantly re-reading entire paragraphs to get back to the story.

I find the annotations interesting, but agree that they break up the flow. I think I prefer the style you see on some blogs where users can comment on specific paragraphs, and it will then show a little comment icon in the margin. However, that does restrict the specificity of the annotations.

Hm, interesting! I think this might be a function of the annotation size—we try to keep single annotations short to maximize readability, but the author of the article seems to be breaking this rule, and having 3 page+ annotations definitely ends up detracting from the original text. (The one that stands out to me is the one that explains the background of the founders, and then just keeps going... And going... And going...) Its important to remember that this was probably the BI author's first time using the platform though, and I found the annotations from Tom, Ilan and Marc much more readable and concise.

Agreed with OP. Wish you guys could come up with a different way to show text is annotated. The highlight just grabs my attention way too much and it tells my brain that "this is important" which isn't necessarily true with Genius annotations. It works well for lyrics on rapgenius, but for content on news and other websites not so much. I hope website owners will be able to pick their own style.

Hopefully the quality of the annotations will be better than on rap genius. It's mostly bad attempts at humor and unnecessary slang translations. I don't see the value in it.

When was the last time you visited? Ignoring our other channels (many of which, including News and Lit (née Poetry), have been in place for a long time), we've been working very hard to decrease the "geekspeak" and unfunny humor annotations. Guidelines have been in place against these types of annotations since I've joined over 12 months ago, and we're still trying to work through the 3 year backlog of bad annotations, while keeping up with the new stuff. Try looking at some of our more popular pages, or some of the stuff on other channels, such as news.genius.com. There's a lot of value possible in annotating, analyzing and contextualizing primary sources!

One thing that would be a very natural extension and really useful, would be annotations to scientific papers and books. I can't count the times I had to laborously fill in the arguments deemed trivial or obvious by the author, but were not terribly obvious at all. arxiv.org hosts a lot of them in source form, so modulo licensing issues and a good latex to html compiler, one could easily make them available for annotation. Other than that there are probably lots of interesting works that are in the public domain.

Obviously using "genius" and "iq-points" are just marketing and the number of rap fans are probably greater than the number of academics. So I don't know, if that is a viable thing to add.

I had not visited for a long time, so I took a look. It does seem like the quality has improved for well-traveled song pages.

I think the last time I looked at Illmatic lyrics, and those are much, much better now than they used to be.

In all fairness, most pop music is pretty vacuous. The Wall annotations are pretty good, a nice mix of references from the movie and personal anecdotes of the band members, e.g. http://rock.genius.com/Pink-floyd-nobody-home-lyrics

The annotations for "Nobody Home" are weak, pseudo-intellectual warblings with very little added value.

"So far, the majority of the discussion of the song has focused on the discord created by the alternating ideas of artistic yearning and mundane if not altogether oppressive reality. But what of the chorus and its reiterations of nobody home? Just who is Pink trying to reach when I pick up the phone?"

Who indeed. There may be other sectors where the annotations work better, but that kind of "insight" doesn't make me want to go back.

i agree with both this and OP - while the format and function of the site is great for reading, i am usually underwhelmed by the annotations. in fairness to the annotators, the content they are annotating is often pretty inane - "he's bragging about his sexual prowess" etc etc.

perhaps we should rename is "genious". let's at least have a sense of humor about what we're doing here.

You are right, the annotations on that are quite good.

Maybe I'm just too white but I use rap genius primarily for slang translations. I listen to a lot of UK grime and rap genius is like a translate.google.com for grime. There's no way I'd be able to decode most of the stuff Skepta says otherwise.

Question: is there any out-of-the-box product/technology that isn't Genius that allows me to annotate text on my site? ala Medium, with user login, etc.?

LiveFyre Sidenotes let people add comments on a per-paragraph basis, which is similar I guess: http://web.livefyre.com/streamhub/#liveSidenotes

Funny how this keeps going around. Internet Explorer used to have a "discussions" feature to add comments to arbitrary web pages. That was around 1999 or so, I think.

annotatorjs.org

So basically this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Sidewiki

Almost. The concept was great, the implementation, not so much. Sad that Google didn't improve upon it. (Then again, they're no longer an innovation house, as I see it.)

I've owned Genieous.com for a number of years and it's been an empty page. Now I know why the number of visits spiked recently :)

Is this an April Fool's Day joke, or a case study in failing upwards?

Anyone else not like the black design? White would be more welcoming since they are going for a more universal appeal.

Black is a bit stark, but I prefer it to white by a long margin. It's easier on the eyes.

Thanks to the advent of high-DPI displays on mobile devices, dark backgrounds with light fonts are more acceptable than they have been in the past. Unfortunately, desktop computing remains largely stuck in a low-DPI purgatory (only recently seeing disruption with the arrival of low-cost 4K displays). As long that purgatory remains, desktop computing is more amenable to light backgrounds with dark text. The reason for this is that generally, with low-DPI displays, small fonts (< 20px or so) will be rendered with a single-pixel stroke weight. A single-pixel stroke on a dark background is harder to visually resolve than a single-pixel dark stroke on a light background.

To-date, designs that use dark backgrounds have typically used bold or semi-bold fonts to compensate, but this is generally over-compensating, making all text look too heavy. (Browsers only recently started offering semi-bold.) High-DPI displays allow for normal-weight fonts to look clear when rendered light on dark.

I hope the trend toward darker backgrounds continues as more displays become high-DPI. When that happens, I want more user interface elements beyond the browser to use a light-on-dark motif as well.

I wish more sites would adopt dark designs. Easier on the eyes and saves energy. When you spend 8-16 hours in from of a monitor every day those become important factors to consider.

> saves energy

As far I understand this is not true. Can anyone smarter than me comment?

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-bl...

I think it only saves energy on CRT screens, which is not popular these days.

Some of the phone screen technologies such as AMOLED also save power with black.

It depends on the type of screen you're using and whether it's actually black - rbg(0,0,0) or just dark. In some cases, yes, it saves energy, some not.

I would disagree that it's not easier on the eyes. At least 98% of dark-background designs. Perhaps this is just preference/different eye thing.

They only save energy if you are using a CRT.

As mentioned above (by guelo), an OLED screens power consumption also varies with the gray level of the displayed image.

Not to mention it's just a breath of fresh air design-wise (when executed well), unlike the massive sea of indistinguishably homogenous 'light-themed' sites...

EDIT: I can't believe people seriously downvoted you for that simple comment. The pedantic negativity this community is filled with is ridiculous sometimes.

It's probably based on the factual inaccuracy of the energy saving claim.

Which can be (and was) remedied by a simple reply to correct that one particular part. Indiscriminately pedantic downvoting on the other hand, just kills the potential for any fruitful discussion all for the sake of some silly minor mistake. Luckily, more people came in and got the comment out of the grey zone in this case.

Netflix recently redesigned to an mostly-white interface and I can't stand it. Harder on the eyes, boring, and less-recognizable as the Netflix brand. Their old color palette was perfect for their product.

I prefer black. White is harsh to me. I use an extension to turn white backgrounds grey in my browser.

I thought there were three founders? Did they really just write off the third that got kicked off and no longer even mention him as a founder? Ice cold baby! Ice cold!

"It’s taken a few stumbles and one less founder to get here, but Genius tells me “we’re psyched to pursue our mission of global annotation with newfound vigor.”"

Mentioned but hidden...

Curious, feel kind of sorry for him.

I hope that's because you didn't read about how why ended up leaving http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/26/rap-genius-co-founder-resig...

And frankly, everything I've seen come out of rap-genius suggests that this wasn't culturally aberrant there.

Agreed. Everything I've seen from them, every time I've interacted, I've felt like I needed a shower. They're scummy, shitty guys, and hopefully ejecting that founder will help them.

I'm aware of why he was fired. I still feel sorry for him. I think a lot of people overreacted over what he said, then again I'm not that familiar with post 9-11 US culture.

It was really offensive, and he made the jokes right after people had been killed which was even more offensive, and he didn't even put it on his own blog but injected that crap into the product.

> 'Those include a disgusting, misogynistic guess from Moghadam that Rodger’s sister is “smokin hot” and compliments on the writing style of the killer.'

Complimenting someone's writing doesn't mean you endorse their actions, and the killer's sister being attractive is relevant when the killer was motivated by sexual frustration. Sometimes we need to talk about things, even though people might be offended, or, in Gawker's case, act offended for attention and/or page views, another way of exploiting tragedy.

Another example: http://history.genius.com/Kurt-cobain-kurt-cobains-suicide-n...

So? People make fun of people dying all the time. I didn't feel his comments were offensive. I thought it was actually true, since it seems like Elliot Rodgers was angry at pretty women.

People take offense at everything nowadays. Obviously he was an idiot for making jokes that anybody with common sense knows would offend people, but it wasn't any more offensive than jokes other popular figures have said before.

He wasn't fired for what he said, he was fired because it was only the latest in a string of incidents.

Have you ever seen videos/interviews with him? He's probably the furthest thing you could be from a likable person.

he probably still has vested privileged shares of some sort. they'll definitely get diluted with further rounds but he'll still own part of the company.

About 5 years ago I submitted a post here asking for comments on an online text discussion/annotation tool: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=821559

Rap Genius looks very similar; glad someone made this work.

I think annotations is a powerful idea. Imagine seeing all the annotations of your favourite satirist, or politician. Instead of a thinker writing their own blog, they could just annotate others - attacking, critiquing and defending.

This awesome power has to work with verification and moderation. No one likes trolls, and no one likes those who do not contribute to the discussion - but no one likes sterile, conformist, one-sided annotations either.

What my ideal annotation service would provide free expansion of ideas rather than at best a kind of directors commentary.

I'm still very curious how they plan to make money. I guess we will have to see...

In my opinion urban dictionary actually solves the same problem that Rap Lyrics is solving except instead of explaining a whole sentence urban dictionary explains one-a few words.

How much might have they spent on Domain?

It must have been a real good offer because the former owner, publicly traded CallidusCloud, just launched a major product using the domain last month: http://calliduscloud.com/about-us/press-releases/pr-feed/cal...

Which it acquired itself in February 2014: http://customerexperiencematrix.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/geniu...

Interesting timing. I would not be surprised if the May launch of genius.com was just something hacked together over a weekend and launched just to push the domain price up.

There isn't much talk about genius.com around the May launch (apart from a bit of press-release marketing). And the focus in acquisition in February leads with LeadRocket, tacking on the brand Genius as an afterthought.

The domain details of genius.com was only switched to CallidusCloud's details in June: http://www.thedomains.com/2014/07/11/rapgenius-com-upgrades-... -- 4 months after acquiring the domain.

Interesting set of coincidences. I wonder when Callidus software knew of RapGenius' interest in the genius.com domain. And their original intentions for it when they acquired it in February.

$40 million

Great for them. Just a couple suggestions for the website is to change the black colour scheme, possibly a lighter colour scheme.Viewing content can get more challenging overtime because of the colour scheme. "Lit" could be changed to "Literature", it doesn't make sense to name all other titles in full and leave one out. But I guess they are still in beta for the genius.com domain.

Has Apple sued yet?

I think it's a great idea to consolidate annotations for all kids of genres in one site, but it will surely make their lives much harder trying to keep track of all that. It's just so much more content than a company their size can sustain.

Actually, there hasn't been any changes to the amount of content on Genius, we (the community) are just presenting it better! And while Genius has, off the top of my head, about 20 employees (including 9 engineers), they have 150+ community moderators that oversee the site's community and hundreds of community editors that are trusted with accepting and editing the site's annotations. Genius isn't a small project!

>'...they have 150+ community moderators that oversee the site's community and hundreds of community editors that are trusted with accepting and editing the site's annotations...'

Are these people paid anything?

Also, isn't 'project' generally suggestive of something a bit more open than a VC-funded startup?

No, no-one except the paid employees are paid. I mean, I suppose you could say that we're all getting duped into providing value to a company, but I truly believe in the strength of the Rap Genius mission, and I don't think that that mission is irreconcilable with a for-profit company either—look at StackOverflow, for example. They too are very heavily community dependent, and have many contributors that don't get paid, but still provide the backbone of the site.

what about the "strength of the Rap Genius Mission" makes you believe in giving hours of your time to them for free? When they have some kind of an exit with this product you will get nothing, they will get a fortune.

I don't understand you.

there is more to life than money. some people value being part of a community, helping others or creating their identity enough to spend lots of time on it.

money is a simplistic proxy for adding value to the world, try understanding value instead of money and you might get richer yourself.

When do they get sued by Gracenote, like all of the other lyrics sites of the past decade?

"embeddable annotations so any website can hover over text and see explanations and background info on what that text means." Doesn't this exist already, and for a while?

Don't lots of websites have links and comments? It's not about the capabilities (which are a little more nuanced than "hover over text and see explanations") it's about the quality and community which creates the content.

I wonder how much it cost them to get the domain name.

Probably under $100k... Location location location, am I right? Even if it was more, that's your brand. As we've seen that search engines can make or break you, this is one of the few things you can control.

I'd be very surprised if 100k did the job. I would bet under $500k though. Still worth it.

Yes, for all those people that type in domain names... Unless they're doing a print campaign, it's not a huge win. Hopefully they won't screw up the SEO on this one.

Considering how Google punished them, moving to a new domain can only help.

"The company also launched an iPhone app earlier this year that also helps ween the startup off of Google’s teat."

Wow, really weird word choice.

Busy day for Dan Gilbert: http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nba/cavaliers/2014/07/1...

Anyone remember Third Voice?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Voice. The idea was ahead of its time. I remember it as a Singaporean company, but the Wikipedia page is thin on details.

Sounds like a Vox-killer to me. Good riddance to those explainer cards!

Another useless service --- here comes the bubble.

Obviously useless to you, but it's by far the best lyric site for hip hop. And with all of the subtle references in lyrics, the annotations can be invaluable in helping casual listeners understand an artist's message.

Why do you think this is useless?

Can't help but be reminded of Entertainment 720 from the photos in this article. Congrats on the funding!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGSIf1KXGHs

For those that miss the reference.

It also helps that one of the founders has a passing resemblance to Jean Ralphio.

When I saw this, I asked myself, "Is this the Onion?"

Waiting for the bubble to burst.

Taking a queue from Diddy?

Whoever gave this band of clowns 40 million is extremely socially irresponsible in my view.

Either that, or else they have a vested interest in social degradation. I haven't made up my mind which I believe yet.

Yep I'm biased. I can't stand rap genius nor those nappy haired punks that run it.

Some people might think this comment is simply ugly hatred. But it's a small shadow of what I've seen spewing out of rap genius guys. Can't_Stand_Them!

Woah I'm taken aback at how hateful this comment is. What did these guys ever do to you? At the bare minimum, Rap Genius is a huuuge step up from all the other lyrics websites out there.

Hate them all you want, but nappy headed is a really offensive slur.

Wow, an incoherent rant with nothing to back it up.

Have I stumbled into a MRA subreddit without knowing it?

There is nothing incoherent about that post.

And.. I freely admit my bias. I don't like these guys nor what they do. This isn't a science debate. I don't need "something to back it up".

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