Earlier this week, Rap Genius and 49 other lyrics sites were served take-down notices from the National Music Publishers Association. Rap Genius co-founder Ilan Zechory was quick to set Rap Genius' crowd sourced and annotated pages apart from the rest, going even so far as to call the site a "monument of human knowledge." But despite his confidence, it seems Rap Genius has begun taking steps to clean-up their game and license their lyrics.
Today Billboard reports that Rap Genius secured a licensing agreement with Sony/ATV Music Publishing -- which handles roughly 31 percent of music publishing worldwide -- sometime "earlier this year" and are currently working out deals with other publishers. Zechory shrugged off the change of tune, explaining to the New York Times: "We chose to partner with the music publishers and license the lyrics so we could get on with our work." And back to hard work those bros seem to be.