Google May Have Just Killed Off Your Favorite Song Lyrics Site

Searching out lyrics to your favorite songs on the web can lead you through a gauntlet of rather questionable sites. However, for those of you that do so frequently you typically have a reliable go to source that you know will fill your needs. Some of those sites may soon become obsolete as Google has formed a partnership that will bring more lyrics directly to you via your search results.

The Web giant has partnered with LyricFind, the world's largest lyric-licensing service, to add lyrics from more than 4,000 publishers to its search results and Google Play Music. Unlike most other sites LyricFind works directly with songwriters and rightsholders, to license and collect new royalties ensuring that those parties are paid for the songs and the lyrics you are seeing

"We're happy to expand the depth and quality of lyrics available on Google's services. We're working together to make lyrics available to a larger audience in a faster and more efficient way. By helping to source lyrics for Google’s search results and Google Play Music, LyricFind continues to demonstrate how lyrics data can be integrated into a variety of services for music discovery and monetization," LyricFind CEO Darryl Ballantyne said in a statement.

Adding song data and details to search results is nothing new for Google. Some of your favorite searches likely already include snippets containing about 120 to 150 words; the rest can be found via a link to Google Play Music, where you can buy a song with one click, or give it a listen (if it's already in your music library). However, it looks like this might be the first attempt Google has made at directly licensing and sharing revenue from those search pages.

For Google, the arrangement is designed to capture the significant amount of traffic around lyrics -- and subsequently funnel them towards its Google Play Music services. This is potentially bad news for several of the current licensed lyric sites such as AZLyrics.com, which has long dominated search results, and some of your favorite unlicensed sites as well. With viewers able to see much of a given song’s lyrics immediately, click-through rates to these sites are likely to decline.