During its high-profile fallout with Google over SEO at Christmas, lyrical annotations site Rap Genius promised an imminent launch of its first mobile app. Yesterday, the app – Genius – was released for iPhone. The app provides mobile access to the site’s database of lyrics and crowdsourced annotations, but also has music recognition technology capable of identifying songs playing in the real world and pulling up their lyrics. That might remind you of another app, especially in Rap Genius’ blurb: “You can hold your phone up to music playing around you, and – SHAZAM! – Genius instantly takes you to the annotated lyrics for that song”. An annotation for ‘SHAZAM!’ in the announcement brings up the actual Shazam’s logo and “No relation”, if you’re wondering. “This is the true launch of Rap Genius. Right now, more than half of our traffic comes from mobile devices. Soon, it will be 100%,” said co-founder Tom Lehman. “In 1,000 years, when the aliens land, ‘Rap Genius’ will literally mean ‘that dope iPhone app’. This app has long been our users’ most-requested feature, and we’re pumped to finally deliver.” Not least because the app will help to reduce Rap Genius’ reliance for traffic on Google search queries.
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