How to add your songs to Genius

Genius prides itself in maintaining easy to read and well organized lyric formatting

• Focus on spelling and grammar
• Don’t capitalize every word. One big issue on Genius, and the rest of the internet, is users capitalizing the first letter of every word. Doing so is not only grammatically incorrect—it makes the lyrics hard to read! Imagine reading this:

I’ve Been Wakin’ The Spirits Of Millions More To Come
A Million Illegally Downloaded My Truth Over The Drums

Compared to this:

I’ve been wakin’ the spirits of millions more to come
A million illegally downloaded my truth over the drums

The latter is much more readable, and makes for a better representation of the next-level content that Genius strives to offer.

Always use apostrophes when writing contractions. When writing a contraction, always place an apostrophe on the side of the word that letters were removed from. For example:

• • ballin’, not ballin (contraction of “balling”)
  • ‘til, not til (contraction of “until”)
  • ’em, not em (contraction of “them”)
  • don’t, not dont

Transcribe all lyrics as the artist says them.

• • The 4th Genius Transcription Commandment: “We ‘scribe how they spit. ”To make words rhyme, fit within rhyme schemes and/or flow, artists sometimes enunciate words oddly or omit parts of them. Our lyrics should be as accurate as possible, so if, for example, an artist intentionally omits the first syllable (transcribing) or letter of a word (transcribing), then we should try our best to have that reflected in our transcripts. As the Head of Lyrics at Genius, Streetlights, said:

Since we transcribe as the artist pronounces their lyrics, if the artist doesn’t pronounce the “G” at the end of the word then it shouldn’t be in the lyrics.

This ties in with the previous commandment,

• Break transcriptions up into individual lines. Transcribing in a line-by-line format makes it not only easier for users to read, but it separates the song up into individual bars that make it easier to annotate as well! For reference, watch the following video.

See how on each even number there is normally a snare/clap? The same applies for most songs. If you can break a song down like this, it’ll be a lot easier to transcribe evenly.

Example

I drink a Boost for breakfast, an Ensure for dessert
Somebody ordered pancakes, I just sip the sizzurp

“Breakfast”, “Dessert”, “Pancakes”, and “Sizzurp” are all said on the snare, thus breaking the lines down as follows:

¹I drink a Boost for ²breakfast, ³an Ensure for ⁴dessert
⁵Somebody ordered ⁶pancakes, ⁷I just sip the ⁸sizzurp

Keep in mind that long lines of text makes it harder for the reader to understand where each line stops, the rhyme scheme, etc. This is even more pressing when considering most of Genius readers read lyrics from their mobile devices.

• Use section headers. Section headers are the headers included in the lyrics to distinguish different parts of the song.

When there is more than one artist on the track (not including producers!) you can add an artist identifier to each section header. This is unnecessary for songs with just one vocalist (but if it’s a solo track on a group project include the artist in the ‘Vocalist’ song facts field). Example:

When multiple artists have vocals in the same section of a song, italicize the second artist’s name:

Make sure to also italicize their portions within that part of the song—this will help readers distinguish who’s saying what. If there’s a third vocalist, you can include their parts in bold. To make text italicized, enclose the desired text as follows:

<i>Talked down on my name, throwed dirt on him</i>

To make text bold, enclose the text with <b> and </b>

Section headers should always be written in the same language as the transcribed text.

Note: always use “chorus” instead of “hook”—the chorus is the central, repeated theme of the song, while the hook is the part that’s intended to stand out and grab the listener’s attention.

For example, take Trinidad James’ “All Gold Everything”—the chorus is:

Gold all in my chain, gold all in my ring
Gold all in my watch
Don’t believe me, just watch…

While the hook is:

Popped a molly, I’m sweatin’, woo
Popped a molly, I’m sweatin’, woo

• Transcribe every ad-lib. Ad-libs are a crucial part of any song—they help build hype and can turn a monotonous track into a banger.It’s best to include every ad-lib—this way we can provide the most complete lyrics possible and do other cool things like pull data from song pages, etc.When writing ad-libs, they should generally be placed inside parentheses.

Use standardized spellings. As Genius aspires to be an interactive guide to human culture we host an array of slangs and colloquialisms—some of which don’t have a definitive source or spelling. As this is the case, below are some Genius preferred spellings:

• I’ma | I’mma | Ima | Imma

Reasoning: As it’s a contraction of “I am” or “I am going to,” proper English dictates there must be an apostrophe in contracted words to indicate missing letters.

• ‘cause | cause | cos | cuz

Reasoning: “‘cause” is a shortening of because and is also a conjunction, while “cause” is a noun and an entirely different word.

• ‘til | till | til

Reasoning: ‘til is a contraction of “until” so it requires an apostrophe, and until was originally derived from till. Onsite the Americanized spelling is ’til, and the British English spelling is till.

• tryna | trynna

Reasoning: “Tryna” is derived from “Trying to.” Since there’s only one “N” in the original words, we shouldn’t add in another one.

• ayy | aye | eh | ey | ay

Reasoning: Unless you’re referring to a pirate, you shouldn’t use “aye.”

• ho | hoe

Reasoning: Unless you’re referring to a garden tool, you shouldn’t use “hoe.”

• ya | yah

Neither of these are wrong, but they aren’t the same thing—”Ya” should be used when in place of “You,” and “Yah” should be used when in place of “Yeah/Yes”

On tracks by artists that use British-English or American-English, please transcribe in their respective variation of language. It’s no good transcribing a British song for a British audience if you’re utilizing American spelling, and vice versa. See this page for more information regarding the differences in American/British spelling.

• • Let’s use this typewriter apostrophe
  • Don’t use this “correct” one
  • “Typewriter Quotation Marks”
  • “Correct” Quotation Marks“Use typewriter apostrophes/quotation marks. Typewriter apostrophes/quotation marks are the default apostrophes/quotation marks on most keyboards. Compare here:

We use the typewriter versions of these characters for two reasons:

• Type out all lyrics, even when a section is repeated. Most songs contain repeated lyrics, whether in the form of a chorus, bridge, refrain, etc. Although Genius used to replace reoccurring lyrics with a section header, the best practice is to type out all of the lyrics. For example:

We also use this practice when lyrics are repeated within a section of a song.

Why should we do this? Imagine you’re just reading through lyrics and you get to a hook. You’ll have to scroll all the way back up, find the first hook, then scroll down and try to find where you were once the song transitions. We want to eliminate this struggle and make things easier for our users.

If you come across a page that hasn’t been updated, it’s easy to update: just copy and paste the lyrics into each reoccurring section. If you run into a page with verified lyrics that you can’t edit, send a message to a staff member and it’ll get taken care of.

When copying and pasting lyrics, as in a repeated chorus, be sure to grab the original lyric and its annotation number—found in parentheses at the end of each line when in the “Edit Lyrics” mode—and to repeat that each time.

• If you don’t understand a lyric, use “[?]”. Since brackets and question marks are rarely used on lyric pages outside of section headers, it’s easier for another user to notice and attempt to fix the error.For example:

I only call you when it’s [?] past five

It’s also good to include a timestamp of where the lyric is in the song—this helps other users find it easier (especially in songs with long instrumental portions)

For example:

I only call you when it’s [? 2:34] past five

• Include a header if the song is recorded in a language other than English. When a song is not in English, it’s harder to find the lyrics on Genius because often times people do not use English, instead they use the language of the song. In order to improve the SEO for the songs, you may add this header to the lyrics of the song.

<center>[translation of the word "lyrics" into the language of the song] + [Song name] + [Artist name] </center><hr>Example:

<center>Letra de "Despacito" con Luis Fonsi y Daddy Yankee</center><hr>

• The sentence should make sense. For example in Spanish, the word “de” is needed in order for the sentence to be correct.
• This only applies to songs that are NOT in English.

Examples of properly formatted songs:
– Shakira’s “Chantaje”
– BLACKPINK’s 마지막처럼 (AS IF IT’S YOUR LAST)

Copy-paste-quoted from Genius at https://genius.com/Genius-how-to-add-songs-to-genius-annotated