LyricsGenius: a Python client for the Genius.com API
lyricsgenius provides a simple interface to the song, artist, and lyrics data stored on Genius.com.
The full documentation for lyricsgenius is available online at Read the Docs.
Setup
Before using this package you'll need to sign up for a (free) account that authorizes access to the Genius API. The Genius account provides a access_token that is required by the package. See the Usage section below for examples.
Installation
lyricsgenius requires Python 3.11 or greater.
Use pip to install the package from PyPI:
pip install lyricsgenius
Or, install the latest version of the package from GitHub:
pip install git+https://github.com/johnwmillr/LyricsGenius.git
Usage
Import the package and initiate Genius:
import lyricsgenius
genius = lyricsgenius.Genius(token)
If you don't pass a token to the Genius class, lyricsgenus will look for an environment variable called GENIUS_ACCESS_TOKEN and attempt to use that for authentication.
genius = Genius()
Search for songs by a given artist:
artist = genius.search_artist("Andy Shauf", max_songs=3, sort="title")
print(artist.songs)
By default, the search_artist() only returns songs where the given artist is the primary artist.
However, there may be instances where it is desirable to get all of the songs that the artist appears on.
You can do this by setting the include_features argument to True.
artist = genius.search_artist("Andy Shauf", max_songs=3, sort="title", include_features=True)
print(artist.songs)
Search for a single song by the same artist:
song = artist.song("To You")
# or:
# song = genius.search_song("To You", artist.name)
print(song.lyrics)
Add the song to the artist object:
artist.add_song(song)
# the Artist object also accepts song names:
# artist.add_song("To You")
Save the artist's songs to a JSON file:
artist.save_lyrics()
Searching for an album and saving it:
album = genius.search_album("The Party", "Andy Shauf")
album.save_lyrics()
There are various options configurable as parameters within the Genius class:
genius.remove_section_headers = True # Remove section headers (e.g. [Chorus]) from lyrics when searching
genius.skip_non_songs = False # Include hits thought to be non-songs (e.g. track lists)
genius.excluded_terms = ["(Remix)", "(Live)"] # Exclude songs with these words in their title
By default the library is silent. To enable progress logging:
import lyricsgenius
lyricsgenius.enable_logging() # defaults to DEBUG; pass logging.INFO for less output
You can also call the package from the command line:
export GENIUS_ACCESS_TOKEN="my_access_token_here"
python -m lyricsgenius --help
# Print a song's lyrics to stdout in text format
python -m lyricsgenius song "Check the Rhyme" "A Tribe Called Quest" --format txt
# Save a song's lyrics in JSON format
python -m lyricsgenius song "Begin Again" "Andy Shauf" --format json --save
# Save a song's lyrics in both JSON and text formats
python -m lyricsgenius song "Begin Again" "Andy Shauf" --format json txt --save
# Save a song's lyrics with a custom filename
python -m lyricsgenius song "Begin Again" "Andy Shauf" --format json --save --output-file my_song
# Save an artist's lyrics to text files (stopping after 2 songs)
python -m lyricsgenius artist "The Beatles" --max-songs 2 --format txt --save
Example projects
- Trucks and Beer: A textual analysis of popular country music
- Neural machine translation: Explaining the Meaning Behind Lyrics
- What makes some blink-182 songs more popular than others?
- Sentiment analysis on hip-hop lyrics
- Does Country Music Drink More Than Other Genres?
- 49 Years of Lyrics: Why So Angry?
Contributing
Please contribute! If you want to fix a bug, suggest improvements, or add new features to the project, just open an issue or send me a pull request.
Releasing
Releases are driven by tags. The package version is derived from the tag, so there is no version to bump anywhere in the repository — tag a commit on master and push the tag:
git tag v3.15.0
git push origin v3.15.0
That builds the package, publishes it to PyPI, and creates the matching GitHub release. A run that fails partway can simply be re-run.
1 maintainer
Metadata
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Release files for lyricsgenius 3.15.0
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