Snippets

Here are some snippets showcasing how the library can be used.

All the songs of an artist
Artist’s least popular song
Authenticating using OAuth2
Getting song lyrics by URL or ID
Getting songs by tag (genre)
Getting the lyrics for all songs of a search
Searching for a song by lyrics
YouTube URL of artist’s songs

Getting song lyrics by URL or ID

genius = Genius(token)

# Using Song URL
url = "https://genius.com/Andy-shauf-begin-again-lyrics"
genius.lyrics(song_url=url)

# Using Song ID
# Requires an extra request to get song URL
id = 2885745
genius.lyrics(id)

All the songs of an artist

genius = Genius(token)
artist = genius.search_artist('Andy Shauf')
artist.save_lyrics()

Artist’s least popular song

genius = Genius(token)

artist = genius.search_artist('Andy Shauf', max_songs=1)
page = 1
songs = []
while page:
    request = genius.artist_songs(artist._id,
                                  sort='popularity',
                                  per_page=50,
                                  page=page,
                                  )
    songs.extend(request['songs'])
    page = request['next_page']
least_popular_song = genius.search_song(songs[-1]['title'], artist.name)
print(least_popular_song.lyrics)

YouTube URL of artist’s songs

import json
# we have saved the songs with artist.save_lyrics() before this
with open('saved_file.json') as f:
    data = json.load(f)
for song in data['songs']:
    links = song['media']
    if links:
        for media in links:
            if media['provider'] == 'youtube':
                print(print(['song'] + ': ' + media['url'])
                break

Searching for a song by lyrics

Using search_lyrics:

genius = Genius(token)

request = genius.search_lyrics('Jeremy can we talk a minute?')
for hit in request['sections'][0]['hits']:
    print(hit['result']['title'])

Using search_all:

genius = Genius(token)

request = genius.search_all('Jeremy can we talk a minute?')
for hit in request['sections'][2]['hits']:
    print(hit['result']['title'])

Getting songs by tag (genre)

Genius has the following main tags: rap, pop, r-b, rock, country, non-music To discover more tags, visit the Genius Tags page.

Genius returns 20 results per page, but it seems that it won’t return results past the 50th page if a tag has that many results. So, a popular tag like pop won’t return results for the 51st page, even though Genius probably has more than 1000 songs with the pop tag.

# this gets the lyrics of all the songs that have the pop tag.
genius = Genius(token)
page = 1
lyrics = []
while page:
    res = genius.tag('pop', page=page)
    for hit in res['hits']:
        song_lyrics = genius.lyrics(song_url=hit['url'])
        lyrics.append(song_lyrics)
    page = res['next_page']

Getting the lyrics for all songs of a search

genius = Genius(token)
lyrics = []

songs = genius.search_songs('Begin Again Andy Shauf')
for song in songs['hits']:
    url = song['result']['url']
    song_lyrics = genius.lyrics(song_url=url)
    # id = song['result']['id']
    # song_lyrics = genius.lyrics(id)
    lyrics.append(song_lyrics)

Authenticating using OAuth2

Genius provides two flows for getting a user token: the code flow (called full code exchange) and the token flow (called client-only app). LyricsGenius provides two class methods OAuth2.full_code_exchange() and OAuth2.client_only_app() for the aforementioned flow. Visit the Authentication section in the Genius API documentation read more about the code and the token flow.

You’ll need the client ID and the redirect URI for a client-only app. For the full-code exchange you’ll also need the client secret. The package can get them for using these environment variables: GENIU_CLIENT_ID, GENIUS_REDIRECT_URI, GENIUS_CLIENT_SECRET

import lyricsgenius as lg

client_id, redirect_uri, client_secret = lg.auth_from_environment()

Authenticating yourself

Whitelist a redirect URI in your app’s page on Genius. Any redirect URI will work (for example http://example.com/callback)

from lyricsgenius import OAuth2, Genius

auth = OAuth2.client_only_app(
    'my_client_id',
    'my_redirect_uri',
    scope='all'
)

token = auth.prompt_user()

genius = Genius(token)

Authenticating another user

from lyricsgenius import OAuth2, Genius

# client-only app
auth = OAuth2.client_only_app(
    'my_client_id',
    'my_redirect_uri',
    scope='all'
)

# full code exhange app
auth = OAuth2.full_code_exchange(
    'my_client_id',
    'my_redirect_uri',
    'my_client_secret',
    scope='all',
    state='some_unique_value'
)

# this part is the same
url_for_user = auth.url
print('Redirecting you to ' + url_for_user)

# If we were using Flask:
code = request.args.get('code')
state = request.args.get('state')
token = auth.get_user_token(code, state)

genius = Genius(token)