I think Google fucked them hard just to prove a point.
99% of lyrics sites are utter trash littered with popups, redirects and extremely obnoxious ads. Genius was the first lyrics site I ever saw that broke that mold.
Sure, they also broke Google's arbitrary rules, but they had a better product that genuinely deserved to be at the top of the rankings. I still wince when I click on a link to any other lyrics site.
I worked for a pre-Genius lyrics service [1] with a website that also broke that mold, at least in my opinion. We didn't have very many ads, and the site design was simpler and far less spammy than most lyrics websites were at the time, probably because the website was just a hook to get people to install their mobile apps.
The lyrics licensing industry is absolutely brutal, and I will be pleasantly surprised if anyone that isn't owned by a music publisher is able to succeed in this market.
> It was simpler and far less spammy than most lyrics websites were at the time, probably because the website was just a hook to get people to install their mobile apps.
How long till the same thing happens to Pintrest who spam google image search results then don't follow through with the actual image and instead lock you off from all the content with a signup window.
