Because it doesn't benefit bands in any way when you read their lyrics on some other site. It benefits them a little bit if you read their lyrics on their site, because you might click around and discover that they're going to play in your town soon and fork out, or buy merch.

Wouldn't that be a reason for Genius to try to drive some more value for the bands?

This is true only if you are an Amazon/Genius user. If you aren't, it's just another site.

After some Amazon anti-worker horribleness a year or two ago, I dropped my Prime subscription and now Amazon is my last resort for shopping. It turns out that as a web experience, it's pretty garbage these days. It's crammed with ads and dubious listings. So I think your "mentally more efficient" is what I'd call "habit". Ordering books from my local bookstore is just as quick and is definitely more pleasant.

Yeah, perhaps. And I'm not really arguing for or against here. But using the Amazon example - a mass of people DO know about it. As a seller it makes sense for me to sell there as well as my own website - I'm likely never to outrank them for generic keywords (I have no idea how well Google ranks lyrics on own band sites over lyric sites, but I assume not as well thanks to aggressive SEO). As a buyer Amazon may be a habit, but they've also spent (probably) tens of millions of dollars on getting that checkout process as frictionless as possible. Dubious listings and ads aside, if you know what you're buying - another site or not - it's pretty easy.

I still don't think the parallel between Amazon and Genius works. Amazon is hugely dominant, where millions of people use it daily or weekly. I'd expect that the overlap between Amazon users and online shoppers is very high. But given Genius's semi-failure, I'd be hard pressed to believe that Genius has a similar mindshare among music listeners or lyrics looker-uppers.

I also don't think Amazon has spent that like you say on "getting that checkout process as frictionless as possible". What they've spent it on is magnifying Amazon's dominance and profitability. And a checkout experience is 25 years old at this point; it's not exactly a hotbed of innovation. My random local bookstore is using some perfectly solid package that does just fine. It's no harder to check out there than Amazon. And as a bonus, shopping is easier and they're always going to send me an authentic copy of the book.

Definitely not arguing your local bookstore isn't a nicer place to buy a book from! But I'd disagree that (especially once you're in the ecosystem) buying something on Amazon isn't pretty frictionless.

Re "I'd expect that the overlap between Amazon users and online shoppers is very high." Honestly, I'd expect the same with Genius and 'people who look up lyrics often'. I mean - I can't name another lyrics website (apart from maybe songmeanings.net, which I'm not sure is still alive?) - and as someone who looks up lyrics a fair amount, Genius appears at the top of Google enough, and is far less spammy/shitty than any of the other random sites that I'll often just start there...

Allll this said, perhaps my analogy wasn't perfect. But I stand by that if I was in a band, and I wanted to share my lyrics - as well as my own site (assuming I could be bother to maintain than AND all the social stuff), I would make sure they were on Genius. Perhaps with decent explanations for things that I added myself.

I'm not sure how you think you have the standing to tell me my own experience of shopping on Amazon just never happened. Regardless, that's a sign to me that further dialog will not be productive.