> do they have competitors? Other lyrics sites look and feel like static html sites from the early 2000's
If I'm looking for song lyrics, and not some collaborative social information-exchange medium, then that's exactly what I want it to look like (and pretty much be.)
Genius is slow loading and slow scrolling and has bigger ad blocks than most lyrics sites. If I'm not specifically looking for annotations rather than mere lyrics, it's strictly worse Tha the competition.
Since when was annotating lyrics a competitive business?
Edit: Since I've been downvoted at least once, I want to clarify. I'm unsure what monetary value can be extracted from the ability to annotate third party websites, or in this case, specifically, lyrics. As others have mentioned, if I want lyrics, I typically just want the lyrics, as uncomplicated as possible. Perhaps I'm missing something.
I should have been more specific- I meant to refer to their competitors in the analysis of lyrics, not just annotation. For this purpose, I feel that Genius is overall quite poor and that there are much better discussion boards and services.
With regards to annotation specifically, songfacts and lyricsmode are competitors in that they support the same kind of annotation Genius does. In this sense, they are certainly competitors, though Genius has far more annotations and is winning the competition.
My main point about the failure of Genius is that it's Jedi mind tricked people into thinking annotation, and not just annotation in general but Genius' specific implementation of it, is the 'best' way to discover the 'objective' meaning of individual songs. There is no objective meaning and Genius' annotation feature is hardly as powerful as people give it credit for. Genius is just a discussion board with annotations enabled- another iteration of the many discussion boards which VC's have foolishly pumped tons of money into and not received a payout from.
I don't think having a more modern design could be classed as a unique selling point. Users often aren't that bothered from what I can tell, if you just want lyrics the fact that the site isn't hyper modern doesn't matter as long as the lyrics are accurate.
Its a testament to a site like ohhla.com . I think they've had one site design refresh since 2000, but I don't think there have ever been lyrics on genius that I didn't also find on ohhla.
If I'm looking for song lyrics, and not some collaborative social information-exchange medium, then that's exactly what I want it to look like (and pretty much be.)
Genius is slow loading and slow scrolling and has bigger ad blocks than most lyrics sites. If I'm not specifically looking for annotations rather than mere lyrics, it's strictly worse Tha the competition.