How Genius Works

Click the “Edit Lyrics” button at the top of the song page. Your ability to do so may depend on your IQ and certain specific situations.

Once you have over 100 IQ, you can click the “Add A Song” link at the top of the page to add lyrics to Genius. Search for the song first to make sure it’s not already on Genius! Learn more about transcription here.

If you are not a moderator or staff member, you can change your username by scrolling to the upper-right hand corner of the website, clicking your avatar icon and then picking the option which says “View Profile.”

Once on your profile, under your avatar picture, you will see various options. Press the option which says “Change name, email address or password.” Here you can choose your new username, make sure it is not offensive and complies with the Genius community policy.

When you click on an annotation, the URL will change. Copy the string of numbers at the end (such as 11315517), then click on the “edit lyrics” button and put the text you want to be annotated in square brackets ([]) with the number next to the closing square bracket in normal brackets (()), as shown below:

Here’s it more zoomed in:

Note that this can only be done on the same song. An annotation cannot be present over multiple tracks.

It’s a way to suspend a contributors' activity if he/she has commited an offense on the site. For example, purposely shitposting, baiting, or trolling, taking part in targeted mass downvoting, spamming, or creating alt accounts.
Please read Genius' Forum Guidelines for more information.

By clicking “Edit Album Info” on an album page, and then clicking “Edit Cover Art.” From there, you can add cover art via URL or from a file on your computer.

If this feature isn’t available to you, it might be because you need 300 IQ points. In that case, contact an editor or moderator and they will be able to do it for you.

An archived suggestion will no longer appear in the comment section, but the data will be available to view in the user’s “All Activity” feed.

A suggestion may be archived by an editor or moderator for any number of reasons:

1. If it does not contain information relevant to the annotation in question.

2. If it mentions something that has already been addressed.

3. If it contains spam or vulgar language.

Community pitching and writing articles for Genius is currently limited to editors and moderators. For more on earning those roles, check out the What Is an Editor? and What is a Moderator? guides.

However, submitting annotations to be featured in Genius articles is open to everyone—you can post them here.

No, “restating the line” is an annotation suggestion feature intended to mark a tate as redundant. Translations are lyric pages for users who speak a language other than English. Here’s a guide.

Additionally, lines performed in a different language other than English on a primarily-English song are similar. Translations are fine on their own, but try to expand upon it more than just the translation.

• 100 IQ: Add a song & start a forum thread.
• 150 IQ: Post in existing forum threads.
• 300 IQ: Edit unlocked metadata.
• 600 IQ: Annotate locked songs & correct/edit lyrics of locked songs.
• 1,000 IQ: Your upvotes will count as double (+4 instead of +2).
• 3,000 IQ: Edit lyrics on song pages with more than 5,000 pageviews if you transcribed it.

There is also a weekly shoutout series where scholars who hit 1k, 5k, 10k, 15k, 20k, 25k, 30k, 40k, 50k, 75k, 100k, 125k, 150k, 200k, 250k, and 300k IQ are congratulated, and a list of all users with 50k IQ or more you can try to make!

You can read about how to gain IQ here, but here’s the main gist of it:

• Add a song fact: +2
• Write an annotation: +5
• Annotation accepted: +10
• Annotation rejected: -5
• Annotation upvoted by a contributor: +2
• Annotation upvoted by a contributor with 1000+ IQ: +4
• Annotation upvoted by an editor: +6
• Annotation upvoted by a moderator or staff member: +10
• Annotation downvoted: -1
• Write a bio: +5
• Suggestion upvoted: +1
• Suggestion downvoted: -1
• Suggestion integrated: +2
• Forum post upvoted: +0.5
• Forum post downvoted: -0.5

Jump on a laptop and try it – it should work! Besides, IQ isn’t everything and you can make progress by annotating lyrics!

You can literally just paste the gif link in the annotation, although be forewarned that some gif links are incompatible for one reason or another. Usually, the ones that end in “.gif” are the ones that actually appear correctly.

It helps to right-click the gif and press “open image in new tab” first, and then check the URL to see if it looks proper. If the image still won’t appear, you can copy-&-paste the link into imgur.com and use the imgur link instead.

You can just copy-&-paste a URL and it will appear like any other link.

If your contribution has been plagiarized directly, you can reach out to a Moderator or post in the Help Forum.

However, oftentimes, annotations lack credible sources, contain improper grammar/punctuation, or simply do not meet Genius formatting standards. It is perfectly acceptable for an Editor to reject this material and then recreate an annotation that does meet current standards. It is also common for Editors to accept sub-par annotations and revise them afterward, but it is ultimately up to that user’s discretion.

Most Editors and Moderators are open to respectfully discussing the reasoning behind their decision in a PM. That is probably the most effective route to take if you feel that your annotation was wrongly rejected.

You could hyperlink an editor by writing a comment below your annotation (e.g. @ Editor username) or by sending a private message, or PM. If you don’t know who to ask, you could also check out the editor or moderator contact list.