Genius: Song Lyrics Finder Reviews

by GarrisonWhite#2

While I miss the way Genius used to detect the song that was playing on the iOS music app, it’s absence doesn’t make that much of a difference outside of me just being a little lazy. I mean, scrolling through and finding the song myself isn’t that difficult.

The absence of this feature becomes a lot more annoying when it seems like Genius isn’t designed to work while music is playing AT ALL. I can’t read song bios or lyric annotations because they either have an autoplay ad that overrides the fact I’m listening to music or they’re a clickbait ad that crashes Genius .

It’s a free app, I fully expect to be inundated with ads while I’m using. There’s a lot that goes into keeping things running and staff deserves to be paid. But when you put out a subpar product that has glaringly obvious features missing (music detection and lyric/song submission functionality being the two biggest), those ads become a nuisance.

by 6od

...rendering Genius unusable. why do i need to log in to my itunes/app store account?? there’s no special feature. i never purchased anything. yet it asks EVERY SINGLE TIME i open Genius . when i open Genius , i HAVE TO enter my password for itunes or else i can’t even do a basic lyric search, which is slow and glitchy at best. i’m using an iphone 7 so this really should not be a problem.
then if i switch to another app, while leaving this app open in the background, when i switch back to this app (which if aren’t logged into with my password), it will ask AGAIN for my itunes password. even though i had JUST put it in. if my screen locks, i have to enter my password. ITS RIDICULOUS. and if you wanted to remain on the same lyrics page? FORGET IT. you have to start your glitchridden slow search allllll over again.

i’m deleting it and using the web version. it’s not worth it anymore.

by Fxragz

Many problems render most of the features completely unusable. Hate to give it a two star but it’s borderline unusable and has been for a long, long time. Genius is incredible on the rare occasion of working properly. It succeeds at its basic function of showing you lyrics of a song you want search, with an abundance of songs you may not have even known existed. Extremely large selection of songs with inputs and corrections from artists and users alike. But beyond this it’s provides almost nothing in regards to helping you understand the lyrics. Whenever you click on a lyric hoping to learn of its meaning, nothing happens. This was my most used feature of Genius before it just stopped working many months ago. Often I can’t see the credited artists and other people who have worked on a song as that also does nothing when I click on the credits. Also unable to play any song even though I have Apple Music connected to Genius , but this isn’t much of a problem as I never use this feature. Hope that these problems are resolved but they’ve been plaguing Genius for many months and updates occasionally help but ultimately end up at the same point as always. I’ve tried updating Genius and uninstalling multiple times but to no success. Absolutely love Genius when it works but it almost never does.

by Dannyamusic

you guys really seemed to ruin Genius. i can’t log in to my this app account w my email & password. it just doesn’t work. tried deleting & reinstalling Genius , nothing. it’s been like this for quite a while now. i’m a verified user & can’t even log in. it has trouble reading my music library & that feature doesn’t work for me either. on top of all of this, i can’t even link my Apple Music account. i tried to play a song, then hit get apple music, then it just says i already have it, but won’t link it & allow me to play full songs. lastly, for the love of music, please allow us to turn off the “Shake for this app App Feedback” feature that brings up an email every time you accidentally move your phone at all, every other app allows you to turn that off. please bring Genius back to the state of greatness it once possessed.

by Djlemonfresh

i love this app. have loved it for years. i think the site/app is a must for anyone who cares about music & lyrics. however every time i open Genius it asks me to sign into iTunes again, prompting me to re-enter my password. it’s been doing that for at least several months, on both my new XR and the 6s i had before that. they really need to fix this, as it is very frustrating. Face ID/Touch ID isn’t an option it seems; i have to type out my password manually every time i launch Genius , or it becomes unusable. if i decline, then it hounds me incessantly with the password pop-up. (note to devs: FWIW, my iTunes account is different from my iCloud account. i have 2 accounts on my iPhone, one for iCloud and one older account for iTunes. iOS allows and understands this. it’s a normal - although perhaps not a super common - thing. perhaps that’s the issue... however the this app app is showing the correct account/email address - the one i use for iTunes - in the pop-up prompts, and it does accept my password each time. so maybe that’s not the issue. hard to say). anyway if they could fix this, i would be a much happier user. as it is, it can be a chore to use, if i just want to quickly peak at some lyrics on a whim.

by Olivine7

I have had Genius for a long time. I used it often. It sometimes wouldn’t load, or it would load the wrong thing, but that was easy to overlook because of the other benefits it provided to me. Recently, for some reason, it has been constantly “downloading”, so I finally just deleted it and tried to redownload it. However, I couldn’t find it anywhere on Genius Store. I had to look it up on Google to find it, and I still can’t download it. The little blue arrow and cloud have turned grey and I can’t click them to begin the download. I am very sad that I can’t download Genius again. I’m disappointed, it was kinda janky but it did a lot of good for me. It was an easy way to look at lyrics and I love that you can see interpretations of the lyrics. Given the chance, I’d download again. 3/5

by Hjehwjwnahaudjsnkqlslfllr

If you scroll to fast it simply just returns you to the top of the page. Sometimes you click on a line of lyrics to see the annotation and it displays the annotation for a completely different line. In NWA’s “Gangsta Gangsta”, on the last group of lines at the end of the page, it either fails to completely load a line of lyrics or makes them appear out of nowhere when clicking on a completely different line. These issues have been around on Genius for a short while and honestly I thought they would have fixed them by now. I hate to say it, but I think they’re just ignoring these problems and bugs because they seem like minor issues that could be fixed. But the problem is that these minor issues make Genius frustrating to use sometimes because they happen so often. Other than those bugs, I think it’s a great app.

by Samar Stan

I understand Genius has only been around since 2009; but it really needs to find a better way to pin point lyrics when the user tries to search them. There’s been countless times I’ve typed in a full sentence to a song, and absolutely none of the right references pop up, then I’ll head to Google and the first one is the one I’m referring to. They really need to get this under control because it can be really frustrating trying to find a single song or like just knowing a certain line or too and really trying to figure out which song it is. I understand you can record it to figure out, similar to Shazam, but I’m not always actually listening to it. I’ll just recall a line or two that stood out and I want to know what song it is. Otherwise it is a good app and the lyrics are most often than not accurate.

by Ashby_kb

I like to learn the lyrics to the songs I like, just like most people out there. That’s the single reason I have Genius but I might try and find something new, reason being I’ll look up specific song names with the artist name too and I’ll get random lyrics that somewhat match bits and pieces of what I put in but it’s always some random f ing song that is completely irrelevant. The search just all around seems nonsensical and it can be pretty frustrating. The strangest part is that I’ll often end up resorting to searching the song on Google and it comes up with a link to this app for that song that didn’t come up in their own search! Like what? How does this happen? How can it be so terribly broken? The developers need to just get their ish together and fix the search.

by Hotdogyo

still better than using the site through safari but theres one thing that bothers me every time I use it: the search feature is WACK. every time i search the name of a song its never even one of the first things that comes up, its always random songs pr artists that dont even have words in common with what i’m searching. other than that its pretty good for its main function (looking at lyrics and annotations) but it does have some other features that seem really unnecessary to me, like the homepage being the news page - that always just feels like a barrier when all i’m trying to do is look up a song and it seems like that shoild be the priority of Genius . otherwise love yall! xoxo

by Tim Twarkleless

After the latest update did nothing to fix this app’s many issues, i deleted and reinstalled Genius , and it’s been working quite well since, so I bumped the rating back up, but I’m going to leave my original review in case said problems come back. Plus it’s a handy guide to the types of issues that in my case at least could be addressed with reinstallation. I looooooove this app, a treasure trove of hidden insights into songs you already love and thought you knew, as well as a portal for discovering new music you haven’t had a chance to love yet. Problem is, over the last 2 or 3 updates, it’s become a chore to interact with, frequently freezing on the very first screen. Today was the first day in ~two weeks that I’ve even been able to get to the search bar, and only then by popping in Siri and then exiting. Genius hung with me as I perused four annotations on one song, but when I tried to follow a link to a different song in the fourth annotation, *CRASH*. Started Genius back up, frozen at the home screen, and this time summoning SIRI was no help.

For the past two weeks I’ve wanted to see if there are any good annotations for Deerhunter songs. Genius in its current state deserves one star, but I gave it two just because this app is so wonderful...when it actually works.

by User_12738

Genius is great overall but there’s a feature that used to exist but was removed for some reason.
1. While playing a song on Apple Music you used to be able to open the this app app and a pop up if the song playing would appear at the bottom of the screen but that’s gone now for some reason. It’s a bummer that you have to search the song now. (Maybe this happened after the addition of the “play on Apple Music” bar but it’s annoying when I’m already listening to the song I’m reading the lyrics too. We can still have both features simultaneously though.)
2. The bug is when I’m playing a song and reading the lyrics to it the this app app stops playing the song once I reach an add. The only way to fix this is to click play on the “play on Apple Music” bar which is aggravating because I was already playing it. This is obviously not a feature but a bug. If I switch to reading a different song then yes I’ll click to play it on the this app app but I’d just prefer if the apps worked together better.

by Mikerichh

Love Genius . Overall it is fantastic and super helpful.

One major annoyance for me is the fact that Genius closes fully when put on the background within maybe 30 seconds. This means I have to tap the search bar and find the song I had up each time I switch apps. Hardly any other apps close fully this quickly so I wish there was a setting for this as it's pretty annoying (as often I switch between apps while using)

Also- the search feature should customize based on the genres you listen to most or based off songs you have looked up in your history. Often I type in a rock song and pop or rap songs come up in the first slots which means I have to type more info in. I understand some songs or more popular and should show up first but I think a "smart" search option that learns from its user would be a fantastic addition for those who don't like mainstream music

by Smithfam3

I use this app multiple times a day and I think it’s probably the best app for its purpose. There’s just a couple problems I have with it.

First problem and the worst is the Apple ID sign in. Every time I get on Genius it pulls up the little box to sign into my Apple ID. I’ll sign in and after about 10 minutes it pops up again and it’s not my phone it’s got to be Genius . It’s the only one that makes me do it and I’ve tried different devices and deleting it but nothing has fixed the problem.

My second problem isn’t as bad as the first. Now I know there are a lot of artists out there but there are a lot of song lyrics and artist that have around one hundred thousand listeners and are missing music on here. Along with the problem of when you search an artist and go to their page there will be duplicates of songs.

by Uhzach

I’m not sure if anyone else has experienced the extremely slow lag whenever you open Genius while listening to a song? It’s almost as if it doesn’t register tapping within Genius , either it takes a couple minutes to register or crashes, and I’ve been waiting for an update to fix this for over a month. Other than this functionality issues, Genius should really have lyric editing and metadata editing features that are included on the website. These key components would help add convenience to contributors on the go without needing access to a compute, which quite frankly should’ve been added quite a while ago. Other than the basic speed issue and the added features, still a great app with loads of excellent aspects that just need some rework :^)

by Jargonloster

Overall Genius is great, but here are a few of the issues I have with it.
• When viewing a song, there are a few videos Genius recommends at the top and they don’t have anything to do with the song you’re actually viewing. I wish there was a setting that just disabled them because I’ll literally never watch one.
• When searching for songs, I often search for the title of a song I already know, because I want to read the lyrics. Genius seemingly prioritizes lyrics as keywords before song titles. I wish there was a setting to choose priority of search results because sometimes I’ll type the exact title of a song and it won’t find it unless I also add the artist name.

So there’s my long-winded short list of issues I have with Genius . Hopefully the developers see this. 😘

by ASV_817

Genius is great, but even when putting certain song titles I get something else, and it gets annoying where I also have to put an artist name right after the title to find the right song, also there should be an option when going to search a song’s lyrics to be a quick select option instead of having to search for it, which could work out great if you have Apple Music connected to Genius just like when you change songs within Genius it lets your quickly select the songs lyrics I would like that but quick and easy when I open Genius it shows the option to pull up the song lyrics easily, besides a few search problems which can be done better and quicker access to lyrics on a currently playing song Genius is great but those two things hold it back from getting a 5 star rating from me

by Jhayden94

I’ve really enjoyed using this app and have learned a great deal about artists, albums and songs. Listening to an album and simultaneously following along with each song’s bio/lyrics has been quite rewarding. The wiki, open-source style ensures the best interpretation is submitted.

this app makes those ‘aha’ moments possible, even when delving into music you’ve listened to for years through reading insightful comments and thoughts. Everything this app has to offer is rewarding and has increased my already great appreciation for music that much more. Cheers guys, keep up the good work!

by CamPoloMan

Genius is great for when you can only remember a small portion of a song. Just type what you remember into the search bar and every song with those lyrics pops up with a preview of the line and the words you typed in bold.

My only suggestion is that when you select a song from the list, Genius should take you to that part of the song rather than starting you at the beginning. Scrolling through the entire song looking for one phrase can be annoying. Especially when you already don’t remember what was sad before it.

Other than that, Genius could improve from a few minor adjustments. But overall 4.5/5. I love how this app has grown over the years.

by Jaskaranbains

Genius is a utterly useless it runs incredibly slow takes a second for whatever is on the home/ recommended page to load then only responds to any other commands after that has finished loaded when I search a song and click on it the lyrics take forever to load basically I think it's a necessity of an app but it needs to be faster and I feel as if this app pays too much mind too the videos and all the supplements of the good stuff it has what most people really use it for are lyrics and their corresponding explanation I still have Genius because I am hoping an update will fix it but whenever I need to find lyrics and meanings I Google it on the Google app and it loads instantly no lag no delay if the website loads faster and is more functioning than the company's app then there's a problem

by Yall Stink

this was my FAVORITE app to read lyrics on. as an animator and story artists that loves to use songs with my creations, this was my heaven. I LIVED for the feature where I could listen and read the lyrics AT THE SAME TIME. But now I can’t listen to it without getting the stupid “Apple Music” crap. I’m poor man. I don’t have money to spare for a streaming service when there are others that work perfectly fine! And in some cases, there isn’t even an option to PLAY the song! Total BS. Bring it back to the original and stop worrying about partnerships with apple. Please. Also!!!! Genius seems to prioritize rap songs. Which I have literally nothing against, I listen to rap and it’s handy when I want the lyrics. But it’s not handy when I’m looking for a song that’s not as mainstream (which I also get is going to be harder to find, but when it’s buried underneath tons of rap songs that only have the lyrics of the worlds I typed in and that’s not the NAME, it gets annoying) I can’t find it! I can see are lyrical keywords, and not the actual song TITLES. Annoying. I get it helps, but have the songs titles first man.

by Smittyrocks99

I use this app multiple times a day and I think it’s probably the best app for its purpose. There’s just a couple problems I have with it.

First problem and the worst is the Apple ID sign in. Every time I get on Genius it pulls up the little box to sign into my Apple ID. I’ll sign in and after about 10 minutes it pops up again and it’s not my phone it’s got to be Genius . It’s the only one that makes me do it and I’ve tried different devices and deleting it but nothing has fixed the problem.

My second problem isn’t as bad as the first. Now I know there are a lot of artists out there but there are a lot of song lyrics and artist that have around one hundred thousand listeners and are missing music on here. Along with the problem of when you search an artist and go to their page there will be duplicates of songs.

by HcaZhcaZ

I’m not sure if anyone else has experienced the extremely slow lag whenever you open Genius while listening to a song? It’s almost as if it doesn’t register tapping within Genius , either it takes a couple minutes to register or crashes, and I’ve been waiting for an update to fix this for over a month. Other than this functionality issues, Genius should really have lyric editing and metadata editing features that are included on the website. These key components would help add convenience to contributors on the go without needing access to a compute, which quite frankly should’ve been added quite a while ago. Other than the basic speed issue and the added features, still a great app with loads of excellent aspects that just need some rework :^)

by Grieco_ninefour

Been using Genius for years, huge user. But just recently, today, I was scrolling, while playing music from my phone, and the advertisement was a video that just started playing. Causing the music to stop of course. I understand having to advertise and make money, but if it stops my music, it’s literally contradicting to the whole reason that I’m using Genius on the first place. Keep up the awesome work, just fix this one thing. I’ve never posted a review on here before, but this was worth it in my opinion.