Jaxsta Pro to Feature LyricFind UK & LyricFind Australia Charts
 
Sydney, Australia (20 Oct. 2020) & Los Angeles, CA (Oct. 20, 2020) – Jaxsta Limited (ASX: JXT), the world’s largest public-facing, dedicated database of official music credits, today announced that the Australian and U.K. lyric charts from the pioneer in licensed lyrics, LyricFind, will be available on Jaxsta Pro.

LyricFind U.K. and LyricFind Australia rank the top trending lyric searches of each respective territory through LyricFind’s syndication service. Using LyricFind’s API to track lyric usage in the U.K. and Australia, these two charts provide more valuable research tools to Jaxsta Pro users. They also add a new way for Jaxsta Pro members to measure the chart success of their music, whether they’re the main artist or the songwriter, as well as the chart movements of their peers and any other song they wish to research.

Due to Jaxsta’s deep official music credit data, users can click on each song in the LyricFind charts and discover all the metadata for those responsible for writing, performing and recording the song. This partnership confirms Jaxsta’s reputation as one of the go-to sources for chart results for artists and non-artists, and for music discovery.

Jacqui Louez Schoorl, Jaxsta CEO and Co-Founder, stated, “One of Jaxsta’s core tenets is that music discovery should be easy and accessible to all. Lyrics are undoubtedly one of the most popular searches, and so to bring LyricFind’s exceptional U.K. and Australian charts to Jaxsta Pro is a perfect fit.”

LyricFind’s Director of Marketing Catherine Fournier said, “Lyric searches reveal how listeners connect with songs on a deeper level, making these searches highly valuable data. We’ve spent over a decade creating useful tools based on this global data and we’re excited to bring these chart insights to Jaxsta Pro’s users.”

LyricFind’s charts often reflect social and cultural events, and are a window into the way in which society reacts to movements such as Black Lives Matter, during which lyrics for songs such as H.E.R.’s “I Can’t Breathe” and Alicia Keys’ “Perfect Way To Die’ charted in the U.K. Fifth Harmony’s “Work From Home” charted at No. 1 in the U.K. during the pandemic, indicating a shift from office to remote work, while the Australian charts featured more thematic songs like Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry Be Happy,” “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” by R.E.M., and “Mad World” by Tears for Fears. LyricFind also sees dramatic increases for lyric searches after the death of an artist, as fans flock to these catalogs as a way to honor and remember these artists. These particular lyric trends were prominent in March and April after the passing of Kenny Rogers and Bill Withers, in June following the death of English singer Vera Lynn, and in October following the loss of Eddie Van Halen.

The pioneer in licensed lyrics, LyricFind, continues to expand into new regions and languages. The company is announcing two new remote teams in India and South Africa. In addition, its Vietnam team will now cover significant new East Asian languages.

“As something we’ve long anticipated, the demand for lyrics in a wide range of languages continues to grow,” explains LyricFind CEO Darryl Ballantyne. “We’re committed to offering high-quality, vetted, licensed lyrics to service providers, platforms, and fans around the world, and we’ve found the best way to do that is to invest in local organizations that have the right expertise to provide the level of service our partners expect.”

LyricFind’s new India service has focused on extensive charts and back catalog in Hindi and Marathi, with more regional languages on the way. In addition to the new language team in India, LyricFind’s long-standing team based in Hanoi, Vietnam has scaled up to expand its capacity, adding lyrics in both Cantonese and Mandarin to its current roster which includes Malay, Bahasa, Thai, Tagalog and Vietnamese. 

LyricFind’s Johannesburg team will cover ten essential southern African languages including Afrikaans, Zulu, Sotho, Xhosa, Tsonga, Venda, Tswana, Northern Sotho, Swati, and Ndebele. Other African languages are in the works for later this year. “Music consumption across Africa and Asia is growing rapidly, and lyrics have a powerful part to play in this growth,” Ballantyne says. “We’re excited to add these ten languages, and counting, to our offerings.” 

This expansion is an extension of LyricFind’s commitment to cultivating the highest quality lyrics in the industry. “We have the largest publishing team in the world, and the highest number of professional lyric editors in the business. The reason major partners like Google and Amazon turn to us as a primary lyrics provider is for the proven quality our process generates, and our focus on building a substantial local presence and expertise around the world to ensure that,” notes Ballantyne. “Our teams know the local music landscape and work tirelessly to gather, edit, and timestamp lyrics in their territories’ respective spoken languages. Well-trained, professional teams with local knowledge in important markets are the key to the extensive coverage and the on-going excellence of our service.”

About LyricFind
LyricFind is the world’s leader in licensed lyrics solutions and is trusted by some of the biggest names in the industry, including Amazon, Google, YouTube, Deezer, Microsoft, Soundhound, iHeartRadio and many others. LyricFind provides its partners with an extensive catalog of accurate and fully legal lyrics, licensed from all the majors, as well as 6,000 other publishers (approximately 55,000 catalogs) and PROs around the world. LyricFind's premium reporting infrastructure is also built to properly track and pay royalties to songwriters and rights holders on a song-by-song and territory-by-territory basis.

With the end of the year just around the corner, LyricFind is announcing the Top 20 Lyric Searches of 2019. Capping off a heck of a ride, Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” wins the crown, topping the list of most-viewed lyrics worldwide for the year.

Ariana Grande’s “7 Rings” and Shawn Mendes’ & Camila Cabello’s “Señorita” round out the top three. Meanwhile, Billie Eilish tallies 5 hits on the list, and Pinkfong’s “Baby Shark” sneaks its way into the top 20. Check out the rest of the results in LyricFind’s infographic.
 

About LyricFind
LyricFind is the world’s leader in licensed lyrics and has licensing from over 5,000 music publishers, including all the majors: Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing. LyricFind has built a quality-controlled, vetted database of lyrics available for licensing and synchronized technology, servicing clients like Amazon, Deezer, Microsoft and many more.

LyricFind’s merchandise service, LyricMerch, is announcing its first marketplace partnership with eBay, one of the world's largest and most vibrant marketplaces. LyricMerch is licensed to create a range of merchandise bearing lyrics from fan-favorite songs, all of which are now available on the marketplace. As part of the partnership, LyricFind and eBay will also collaborate to create targeted merch campaigns that are tailor-made for shoppers.

“eBay is a trusted online platform for customers looking for unique gifts and niche items, which is what LyricMerch offers,” says Darryl Ballantyne, Founder & CEO of LyricFind and LyricMerch. “Having our products available on eBay and their global shoppers allows us to lean into a marketplace that already caters to our target audiences, making this a natural partnership.”

LyricMerch is the only producer of fully licensed apparel and lifestyle items featuring top artists’ lyrics and on-trend designs. “Licensing a lyric means more than just using it with permission. It means royalties go to the people who make music happen - the songwriters and rights holders,” explains Ballantyne. “When you purchase a LyricMerch t-shirt or mug, your purchase earns money for the writers and teams behind the lyrics.” As the collaboration moves forward, eBay’s insights will help better customize LyricMerch to appeal to its existing customers.

“Shoppers come to eBay for its breadth of rare, unique and right now inventory, from that one ‘I can’t believe I found it’ piece to the latest trending items,” said Chelsea Walsh, Senior Category Manager of Media at eBay. “LyricMerch and its range of curated offerings will be perfectly at home on our marketplace, and shoppers will be thrilled to find that perfect piece of apparel or merch that reps their favorite artists.”

Music fans and eBay customers will get their first taste of the collaboration this holiday season with a special LyricMerch gift guide. From The Rolling Stones and David Bowie to Ariana Grande, the exclusive designs will be perfect for the rock lovers and millenial pop fans on shoppers’ gifting lists.
 

About LyricFind
LyricFind is the world’s leader in licensed lyrics and has licensing from over 5,000 music publishers, including all the majors: Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing. LyricFind has built a quality-controlled, vetted database of lyrics available for licensing and synchronized technology, servicing clients like Amazon, Deezer, Microsoft and many more.

About eBay
eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) is a global commerce leader including the Marketplace, StubHub and Classifieds platforms. Collectively, we connect millions of buyers and sellers around the world, empowering people and creating opportunity through Connected Commerce. Founded in 1995 in San Jose, Calif., eBay is one of the world's largest and most vibrant marketplaces for discovering great value and unique selection. In 2018, eBay enabled $95 billion of gross merchandise volume. For more information about the company and its global portfolio of online brands, visit www.ebayinc.com.

LyricFind is pleased to announce a partnership with Fender Music Instruments Corporation, to provide lyrics to its new app, Fender Songs. The app allows users to practice, play along, and perform to millions of their favorite songs on guitar, ukulele or piano.

Fender Songs will draw on LyricFind’s extensive database of lyrics in more than a dozen languages, with lyrics that are fully vetted to get both aspiring and experienced players singing the right words along with their favorites. The integration of lyrics in Fender Songs weaves seamlessly into the app’s on-demand song learning for beginners and experienced players alike. The app provides several ways to access lyrics, including lyric overviews in practice mode and a “karaoke-style” scrolling lyrics in play-along mode.

"Lyrics play a powerful role in deepening our relationship to music, especially when we move from listeners to students and aspiring artists,” said LyricFind’s VP of Sales, Roy Hennig. “We're thrilled to partner with such a storied instrument and music brand to encourage more fans to become music makers."

“We’re excited to expand our digital products offering with Fender Songs. Songs will allow our players to access practically any song they want and provide quick and easy-to-learn chords they can practice directly on the app,” said Ethan Kaplan, General Manager of Fender Digital. “Working with LyricFind, publishers and record labels, we’ve been able to ensure artists' songs and lyrics are fully licensed, taking our relationships with them to a new level.”

LyricFind has worked for more than a decade to bring lyrics into new digital settings and formats, where musicians and fans want them most. By making sure lyrics are everywhere and fully licensed, LyricFind has created a new revenue stream for songwriters, artists, and publishers, strengthening listener engagement in the process.

About LyricFind:
LyricFind is the world’s leader in licensed lyrics and has licensing from over 5,000 music publishers, including all the majors: Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing. LyricFind has built a quality-controlled, vetted database of lyrics available for licensing and synchronized technology, servicing clients like Amazon, Deezer, Microsoft and many more.

About Fender Music Instruments Corporation: 
Since 1946, Fender has revolutionized music and culture as one of the world’s leading musical instrument manufacturers, marketers and distributors. Fender Musical Instruments Corporation (FMIC)–whose portfolio of brands includes Fender®, Squier®, Gretsch® guitars, Jackson®, EVH® and Charvel®–follows a player-centric approach to crafting the highest-quality instruments and digital experiences across genres. Since 2015, Fender’s digital arm has introduced a new ecosystem of products and interactive experiences to accompany players at every stage of their musical journey. This includes innovative apps and learning platforms designed to complement Fender guitars, amplifiers, effects pedals, accessories and pro-audio gear, and inspire players through an immersive musical experience. FMIC is dedicated to unlocking the power of musical expression for all players, from beginners to history-making legends.

LYRICFIND MEDIA CONTACT:
Julia Thomas
Publicist
rock paper scissors, inc
julia@rockpaperscissors.biz

FENDER MEDIA CONTACT:
Christina Stejskal
Vice President, Global Communications
Fender Musical Instruments Corp.
CStejskal@Fender.com 
Press@Fender.com

“Old Town Road” took the early summer of 2019 by storm - breaking Billboard records and leading LyricFind’s top lyric searches at the end of July. While the most searched for lyrics of the summer in the US belong to "Old Town Road" - by summer’s end, Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy” swooped in to take the crown globally.

To celebrate the close of summer, LyricFind, the world’s leader in lyric licensing, created an infographic for the world’s most searched for lyrics of the summer. Behind “Bad Guy” is Lewis Capaldi’s “Someone You Loved,” followed by Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road [Remix]” with Billy Ray Cyrus to round out the podium.

Check out the rest of the results in LyricFind’s Lyrics of Summer ’19 infographic.

About LyricFind
LyricFind is the world’s leader in licensed lyrics and has licensing from over 5,000 music publishers, including all the majors: Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing and Kobalt. LyricFind has built a quality-controlled, vetted database of lyrics available for licensing and synchronized technology, servicing clients like Amazon, Deezer, Microsoft and many others.

Finding music behind the wheel has undergone a minor revolution. It’s now possible to say your favorite line from your favorite song and have your car stream it immediately. Lyrics are making music search and discovery car-friendly, as voice command takes over how we engage with in-auto media and entertainment. 

The search for music will only get more interesting and nuanced as certain types of data are integrated into voice command systems. Soon, you may not even have to have a specific song or line in mind. As search improves, as machine learning and mood data get woven into the mix, it will be possible to use lyric data to find that perfect song for a rainy morning in Boston, or for a summer night’s ride down the 101. Your voice will trigger a contextual search that can dig up the sounds you’re looking for.

To celebrate this new era of music in cars, LyricFind, the world’s leader in lyric licensing, has ranked the top mentions of auto brands in music. Hip hop and country artists are most likely to give car (and truck) shout outs, but you’ll find different makes and models everywhere you listen. 

In this infographic, Mercedes dominates with 4,952 mentions in lyrics --country maven Maren Morris dedicated an entire song to “80s Mercedes”--followed by a mix of both luxury and good ol’ American names like Chevy and Ford. (“If it ain’t a Chevy, don’t raise it up,” recommends Snoop Dogg). 

Sorry, Ascari: Though you’ve got rhyming power, you’re at the rear with just two mentions.

About LyricFind
LyricFind is the world’s leader in licensed lyrics and has licensing from over 5,000 music publishers, including all the majors: Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing and Kobalt. LyricFind has built a quality-controlled, vetted database of lyrics available for licensing and synchronized technology, servicing clients like Amazon, Deezer, Microsoft and many others.

LyricFind are happy to confirm an agreement with 63 UK publishers through PMLL, a division of the UK Music Publishers Association. Thanks to the MPA’s support, the remaining PMLL members and other MPA and MCPS members will be encouraged to opt in to direct licensing agreements with LyricFind, for whichever territories are not currently licensed. 

The agreement brings these publishers’ catalogs into LyricFind’s global lyric licensing system, which pays rights holders for every lyric display, as well as for lyric translations and merchandise featuring lyrics. The direct relationship with key publishers is invaluable in maintaining an accurate and sustainable lyrics licensing environment, while benefiting songwriters and rights holders by creating a new revenue stream from their lyrics.

“We are excited to work with these important UK publishers and songwriters in major new territories and to enable them to legally distribute, exhibit, and monetize their lyrics through our 60+ platform partners,” says Robert Singerman, SVP International Publishing at LyricFind. 

“Lyrics provide a new revenue stream for the members we represent,” said PMLL General Manager Viki Smith. “Publishers need these new approaches and I look forward to supporting them as they explore the services LyricFind has to offer.”

About LyricFind
LyricFind is the world’s leader in licensed lyrics and has licensing from over 5,000 music publishers, including all the majors: Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing and Kobalt. LyricFind has built a quality-controlled, vetted database of lyrics available for licensing and synchronized technology, servicing clients like Amazon, Deezer, Microsoft and many others.

LyricFind announces its partnership with fizy, a music streaming and download service powered by leading Turkish mobile phone operator, Turkcell. fizy is a regional powerhouse with thousands of tailored playlists, videos, and other content.

“We’re excited to work with fizy, our first partner in Turkey, as they’ve a great leadership team and innovative technology,” notes Roy Hennig, Vice President of Sales at LyricFind. “This deal cements our foothold in a region that’s of growing importance to our global music clients.” LyricFind will provide its full database of lyrics in a variety of languages to fizy, with Turkish lyrics managed by its new Morocco-based office.

“Our market is flourishing, and there is demand for world-class music streaming. Adding lyrics to fizy is part of our effort to make our service truly outstanding and engaging,” says Barış Zavaroglu, Director of Digital Media Services at fizy. “We appreciate LyricFind’s dedication to serving both users with quality vetted lyrics, and rights holders with licenses and royalties.”

Turkey is one of the most promising areas for continued growth of streaming music, where smartphone adoption and affordable mobile data have transformed listening habits and created striking new opportunities for global and regional businesses. Lyrics have a vital role to play in promoting this growth and driving subscriptions in these lively markets.

“Telcos know they need to deliver the best possible experience to their subscribers, and LyricFind is proud to support a superior standard of service,” Hennig says. With partnerships and dedicated offices around the world, LyricFind has the leading ability to deliver regionally appropriate, fully licensed lyrics anywhere.

About LyricFind
LyricFind is the world’s leader in licensed lyrics and has licensing from over 5,000 music publishers, including all the majors: Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing and Kobalt. LyricFind has built a quality-controlled, vetted database of lyrics available for licensing and synchronized technology, servicing clients like Amazon, Deezer, Microsoft, and many more.

Translations matter, and just as lyrics boost engagement, translated lyrics boost engagement across language barriers.

Toronto-based lyric licensing pioneers, LyricFind, have received funding from the Department of Canadian Heritage Creative Export Canada program to focus on and globalize Canadian content, using the power of lyrics and translation. The two-year project supports the licensing, transcription and translation of Canadian artists and songwriters’ lyrics, and monetizes their lyrics through LyricFind’s extensive roster of clients.

LyricFind will also power lyric translation display at live events globally and translate popular lyrics by Canadian artists like Drake and Carly Rae Jepsen into widely spoken world languages. The grant also allows for the translation of the most important Indigenous language songs into English and French, and reciprocates by translating top Canadian song lyrics into Indigenous languages, all with the help of First Nations music and language consultants. Lyric translations promise to spark additional engagement with songs in languages like Inuktitut, Cree, and Anishinaabemowin, as well as support interest in lesser-spoken Indigenous languages like Maliseet.

All told, this program will enable LyricFind’s biggest Canadian-focused content and translation distribution effort to date. “We created the first real global licensing ecosystem for lyrics, but we feel we have yet to bring the full linguistic breadth and artistic range of our home country to the wider world. Thanks to this project, we’re aiming to expand our catalog of Canadian content by a factor of ten,” Darryl Ballantyne, Founder and CEO of LyricFind notes. “We’re excited to start sharing translated Canadian content around the globe.”

One of the most innovative aspects of the project is its use of human translation, which offers a more accurate and nuanced take on song meanings. “Automated translation works well in particular instances and with common language pairs, like Spanish to English, but in most cases, it fails to capture the complexity and subtlety of song lyrics in translation,” reflects Robert Singerman, SVP, International Publishing at LyricFind, who has dedicated the last 15 years of his career to giving music subtitles.

“It’s like we’ve been watching a stunning foreign film without subtitles all this time,” Singerman muses. “Now we get to move deeper into music, whether it’s being played live or heard digitally in languages we don’t know. It’s what the troubadours and all songwriters and artists who followed intended; communication with the audience.”

About LyricFind
LyricFind is the world’s leader in licensed lyrics and has licensing from over 5,000 music publishers, including all the majors: Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing and Kobalt. LyricFind has built a quality-controlled, vetted database of lyrics available for licensing and synchronized technology, servicing clients like Amazon, Deezer, Microsoft, and many more.

With 4/20 just around the corner, cannabis fans everywhere are getting ready to enjoy their favorite day. LyricFind put together an infographic to provide one more way to celebrate the day, by compiling the top weed name-drops in music.

Marijuana is the most name-dropped term for weed in lyrics, with 774 mentions in songs like Beck’s “Nitemare Hippy Girl” and Frank Ocean’s “Nights.” Kush followed closely with 720 song mentions, and Cannabis rounded out the top three with 401 mentions.

Meanwhile, Sativa proves more popular than Indica in lyrics, with Sativa being mentioned 144 times in songs like Kodak Black’s “Acting Weird” versus 29 mentions for Indica in songs like Logic’s “Indica Badu.”

Check out how the rest of the weed terms stack up in LyricFind’s infographic.

About LyricFind
LyricFind is the world’s leader in licensed lyrics and has licensing from over 5,000 music publishers, including all the majors: Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing and Kobalt. LyricFind has built a quality-controlled, vetted database of lyrics available for licensing and synchronized technology, servicing clients like Google, Deezer, Microsoft, Pandora, and many more.  

The NBA playoffs are here, and everyone’s asking the big questions: Who can beat Golden State? Who will be the postseason standout? And most importantly, which teams are name-dropped the most in music?

To celebrate the arrival of the playoffs, LyricFind has pulled together data for the most mentioned teams and players among playoff qualifiers, with name-drops coming from music’s biggest artists, from Drake to Migos and Lil Wayne.

The Golden State Warriors take the crown with 39 song mentions, with the Boston Celtics and Detroit Pistons following closely at 31 and 30 mentions, respectively. Golden State’s Steph Curry leads the way for the most name-dropped player currently in the playoffs with 56 song mentions, followed by Houston’s Chris Paul with 47.

Check out Lyricfind’s infographic to see the rest of the results.
 

About LyricFind
LyricFind is the world’s leader in licensed lyrics and has licensing from over 5,000 music publishers, including all the majors: Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing and Kobalt. LyricFind has built a quality-controlled, vetted database of lyrics available for licensing and synchronized technology, servicing clients like Google, Deezer, Microsoft, Pandora, and many more.

LyricFind has opened offices in two key regions for the global music business: Morocco and Vietnam.

These new offices are the latest in several moves to grow the company’s global footprint, as the leading source of licensed lyrics. “LyricFind’s goal has been to expand and diversify our lyric coverage across the world and be able to service as many territories as possible,” says Darryl Ballantyne, Founder & CEO at LyricFind, “and our new offices in Vietnam and Morocco are the next logical steps toward that goal. LyricFind’s global expertise and extensive catalog of lyrics make us natural partners for the music streaming services and licensing organizations that are coming into their own in markets across the world.” This international range positions LyricFind to license lyrics for hits that reach around the globe as well as locally popular music in an increasing number of markets.

At LyricFind’s offices in Vietnam, a local team covers Thai, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Bahasa, and Malay language lyrics. LyricFind recently inked a deal with MCT, Thailand’s collective rights management association, to license lyrics by Thai artists. The newest LyricFind office in Tangier, Morocco, is home to a local team covering Arabic and Turkish languages.

LyricFind takes international business savvy and linguistic expertise seriously. In 2018, LyricFind retained expert regional consultants in Japan, Germany, and Brazil to assist the publishing team in acquiring new licensing partnerships. LyricFind also established partnerships with important publishing and PRO players on two continents: Capasso, which covers 38 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and UBC in Brazil.

“We’re proud of the expansion we’ve made into markets in the Middle East and North Africa, Latin and South America, and Asia,” explains Ballantyne, “Expansion into different territories grows our lyric coverage and makes LyricFind an even more trusted name in the music industry.”

About LyricFind
LyricFind is the world’s leader in licensed lyrics and has licensing from over 5,000 music publishers, including all the majors: Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing and Kobalt. LyricFind has built a quality-controlled, vetted database of lyrics available for licensing and synchronized technology, servicing clients like Amazon, Google, Deezer, Microsoft, Pandora, and many more.

While Fortnite has taken the gaming world by storm, it still bows down to the classics in video game mentions in music. LyricFind has put together this infographic for the most mentioned video games in lyrics, and Pokemon came out victorious with 129 song mentions.

Pac-Man and Street Fighter round out the top three with 108 and 86 mentions, respectively, with name drops in songs like Outkast's "Spaghetti Junction" and M.I.A.'s "Trouble Again." Meanwhile, Fortnite is the only game released this century to crack the top 10.

Check out the rest of the results in LyricFind's infographic.

About LyricFind
LyricFind is the world’s leader in licensed lyrics and has licensing from over 5,000 music publishers, including all the majors: Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing and Kobalt. LyricFind has built a quality-controlled, vetted database of lyrics available for licensing and synchronized technology, servicing clients like Google, Deezer, Microsoft, Pandora, and many more.

In our new borderless Global music streaming market, Africa is seen by many industry analysts as the next region to drive user growth.

LyricFind, the world’s largest lyric licensing company, is excited to further extend their lead with published content, by announcing a blanket deal for the great majority of African markets with CAPASSO, the South African mechanical rights organization. CAPASSO (Composers, Authors and Publishers Association) covers African repertoire from 38 countries, through affiliated African societies.

CAPASSO is a mechanical rights licensing agency based in Johannesburg - South Africa, which collects and distributes royalties to its members: music publishers and composers. The deal will mean South Africa and 37 other African countries’ songs will now be fully licensed and monetized by LyricFind across Africa. It also allows all international repertoire to be exhibited and monetized in these countries, legally and with the highest quality standards for the lyrics, the rights and the royalty reporting.

“This was truly a group effort,” says Robert Singerman, VP, International Music Publishing at LyricFind. “This agreement evolved thanks to many meetings at MIDEM as CAPASSO developed as the South African Mechanical Rights Society. It would not have happened without the generous assistance of CAPASSO and SAMRO Board member David Alexander of Sheer Music, Africa’s biggest independent music publisher, the CAPASSO team, especially Warrick Percy and strong relationships with Renneth Tshisikule of IMEXSA, the South African music export office.”

David Alexander said “I am pleased that this deal has finally been closed because global income for lyrics is on the rise and it is now an important part of the Songwriter and Publisher’s revenue streams.”

“This agreement is the first of its kind for CAPASSO” says Warrick Percy, Head of Licensing and Business Development at CAPASSO. “Reprographic rights account for roughly 8% of music publishing royalties worldwide. Thus far, CAPASSO have not been in a position to monetize and collect these royalties on behalf of African composers despite extensive usage taking place. This agreement will now ensure that African composers are properly represented and accounted for thanks to the wonderful work being done by Lyricfind.”

The agreement also notably covers legal lyric translations of global music into African and other languages (and vice versa). Legal translations will further help break down language barriers and increase music’s usage, engagement and revenue.
 

List of 38 Countries
Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina-Faso, Cape Verde, Chad, Comoros, DRC, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Sao Tome e Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, South Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zimbabwe
 

About LyricFind
LyricFind is the world’s leading lyrics company who power lyric licensing, content and reporting services for Amazon, Deezer, Google, Pandora, iHeart, Microsoft, Pioneer, Anghami, SoundHound, SoundTrack Your Brand and many other websites and streaming services worldwide.

With the end of the year just around the corner, LyricFind is announcing the Top 20 Lyric Searches of 2018. Taylor Swift’s “Look What You Made Me Do” rules, topping the list of most-viewed lyrics globally for the year.

Women led the way on lyric searches this year, with Camila Cabello’s “Havana” and Dua Lipa’s “New Rules” coming in second and third, respectively. Check out the rest of the results in LyricFind’s infographic.

About LyricFind
LyricFind is the world’s leader in licensed lyrics and has licensing from over 5,000 music publishers, including all the majors: Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing and Kobalt. LyricFind has built a quality-controlled, vetted database of lyrics available for licensing and synchronized technology, servicing clients like Google, Deezer, Microsoft, Pandora, and many more

LyricFind seals deals with Brazil’s main publishers and PRO, creates new legally licensed market for Brazilian lyrics.

Brazil is Latin America’s largest music market, and now its writers and publishers will be paid for lyric displays online thanks to LyricFind. These partnerships embrace major publishers like Som Livre and MK Music, as well as UBC, Brazil’s largest Performing Rights Organization, and finally Brazil’s biggest digital distributor, ONErpm. In the near future, these publishers will also have the opportunity to see their lyrics licensed on shirts, mugs, and other wares through LyricFind’s direct-to-fan platform, LyricMerch.  

“Brazil’s music business is significant, accounting for over 15% of the revenue generated in South America. It is by far the largest Portuguese speaking/singing market in the world,” notes LyricFind’s VP of Music Publishing Robert Singerman. “In addition to a dedicated representative working on the ground to cultivate relationships in Brazil, LyricFind’s content team in Toronto, has Brazilian employees verifying and implementing Brazilian and Portuguese content,” - this legitimacy being a key aspect of LyricFind’s approach to vetted lyrics and lyric translations.

“Lyrics are key elements of the way we experience music, and I am thrilled to be able to work with international partners to increase the opportunities for Brazil’s many writers and publishers,” says Luciana Pegorer, LyricFind’s representative in Brazil. In addition to founding her own music company, Pegorer spent seven years at Warner Music Brasil and served as President for the Brazilian Independent Music Association, as well as on boards at WIN and Merlin. She and Singerman have collaborated extensively to build substantive ties between Brazilian and international music professionals and companies.

“This is the culmination of years of work together,” Singerman adds, himself a veteran manager, label exec, and international dealmaker. “This has great potential to increase Brazilian music revenue significantly worldwide, through original lyric exhibition and legal lyric translations.”

LyricFind hopes to license all the remaining unlicensed PROs and unlicensed independent music publishers and songwriters and eventually completely legalize and monetize all lyric display and usage for the publishers and songwriters. “Until now, Brazil has been an unlicensed or semi-licensed lyrics market and a completely unlicensed and unauthorized lyric translation market,” explains Pegorer. “We’re looking forward to building a robust monetized and completely legal landscape, as LyricFind did for lyrics in other territories.”  

Singerman will be speaking on a panel, “Opportunities for digital music on social media and other services,” on October 26, 2018 at Music Trends Brasil in Rio de Janeiro, the music conference founded by Pegorer that will feature speakers from companies active in the music and tech space, including Twitter, Instagram/Facebook, and more.

About LyricFind
LyricFind is the world’s leader in licensed lyrics and has licensing from over 5,000 music publishers, including all the majors: Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing and Kobalt. LyricFind has built a quality-controlled, vetted database of lyrics available for licensing and synchronized technology, servicing clients like Google, Deezer, Microsoft, Pandora, and many more.  

With Halloween just around the corner, everyone’s favorite candy brand is top of mind - from Hershey bars to Laffy Taffy and everything in between. Indulging in the candy craze, LyricFind has created an infographic listing the most mentioned candy brands in song lyrics.

In ranking the top 12 candy brands, M&M's takes first place with 122 song mentions while Skittles follows closely at 100 mentions. Check out LyricFind's infographic to see the rest of the results and top songs mentioning these brands. From Beyonce to The Beach Boys, almost everyone's got some kind of sweet tooth.

About LyricFind
LyricFind is the world’s leader in licensed lyrics and has licensing from over 5,000 music publishers, including all the majors: Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing and Kobalt. LyricFind has built a quality-controlled, vetted database of lyrics available for licensing and synchronized technology, servicing clients like Google, Deezer, Microsoft, Pandora, and many more.  

Whether you’re looking for the perfect gift for the musician, the athlete, or the Instagram “socialite” in your life, LyricMerch has you covered. Offering unique apparel and accessories customized with professionally made song lyric designs, LyricMerch has the perfect gift for your AC/DC rocker dad, your Bruno Mars-obsessed best friend, or your sister who lives by every word Beyonce sings.

LyricMerch lets you wear your favorite lyrics on t-shirts, hoodies, crewnecks, long sleeve tees, and more - and does so legally by giving back a significant percentage of proceeds to your favorite songwriters and artists. Their pre-made designs are created to complement the lyrics fans have grown to love - providing something fun for all the different people in your life. If the 800+ designs they have online don’t fit what you’re looking for, you can also customize your own!

About LyricMerch 
LyricMerch is a new consumer-facing lyrics service from LyricFind, the pioneering company that brought fully legal lyrics to search engines, lyric sites, and music streaming services around the world. LyricMerch draws on LyricFind’s database of millions of lyrics and allows fans to put over one hundred thousand licensed lyrics on a wide range of clothing and household items.

With New York Fashion Week upon us, LyricFind has put together an infographic to showcase the most name-dropped high fashion designers in music. Gucci rules the runway with 858 song mentions, while Versace is a close runner up with 829. Prada rounds out the podium with 807 mentions. See the rest of the top 10 results in LyricFind’s infographic.

About LyricFind
LyricFind is the world’s leader in licensed lyrics and has licensing from over 4,000 music publishers in 100 countries, including all the majors: Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing and Kobalt. LyricFind has built a quality-controlled, vetted database of lyrics available for licensing and synchronized technology. Behind the scenes, LyricFind tracks, reports, and pays royalties to publishers on a song-by-song and territory-by-territory basis.

LyricFind has pulled the summer’s most searched for lyrics. The results? Cardi B rules, locking in the top two most searched for songs of the summer. Her feature on Maroon 5’s “Girls Like You” lands at number one while her smash hit “I Like It" grabs the number two spot.

About LyricFind
LyricFind is the world’s leader in licensed lyrics and has licensing from over 4,000 music publishers in 100 countries, including all the majors: Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing and Kobalt. LyricFind has built a quality-controlled, vetted database of lyrics available for licensing and synchronized technology. Behind the scenes, LyricFind tracks, reports, and pays royalties to publishers on a song-by-song and territory-by-territory basis.

Troy, Mich. – July 17, 2018 – WEYV, an app platform with music, magazines, e-books and more all in one experience, today announced its partnership with LyricFind, the world’s leader in lyrics licensing.

WEYV now includes lyrics synchronized with songs in the WEYV mobile app and web player. When the play queue is open in the app, lyrics are displayed and highlighted line-by-line in time with the music.

“After conducting a survey surrounding our users’ preferences for new features in WEYV, the overwhelming majority of users expressed interest in having lyrics alongside the songs they listen to in the app,” said Stephanie Scapa, CEO of WEYV. “Listening to our users is core to our business and helps to inform and prioritize new content and features – like lyrics – to continuously improve their WEYV experience.”

“We are excited to collaborate with WEYV to create a more immersive experience for its users by enhancing their music discovery journey,” said Roy Hennig, LyricFind Vice President of Sales.

WEYV is available as an ad-free, subscription-based app that allows users to listen to music, read magazines and e-books, and (soon) watch visual content. WEYV is available on iOS and Android devices and via a web player for U.S.-based users.

More content will be added to WEYV on a rolling basis. WEYV is available for a 14-day free trial and can be accessed via the App Store, Google Play and the WEYV website.

About WEYV
WEYV, an Altair (Nasdaq: ALTR) company, is a platform that offers a full catalog of digital content to U.S.-based consumers and is available via iOS and Android devices and via a web player. WEYV enables users to listen to music, read magazines and e-books and eventually watch visual content like TV shows and movies. WEYV is committed to donating 0.5 percent of its revenue to charitable causes. For more information, visit www.weyv.com and follow WEYV on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

About LyricFind
LyricFind is the world’s leader in licensed lyrics and has licensing from over 4,000 music publishers in 100 countries, including all the majors: Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing and Kobalt. LyricFind has built a quality-controlled, vetted database of lyrics available for licensing and synchronized technology. Behind the scenes, LyricFind tracks, reports, and pays royalties to publishers on a song-by-song and territory-by-territory basis.

This year, in honor of Mother's Day, LyricFind put together this infographic of the most momma mentions, or "mom-drops" in hip-hop music. Who are rap music's biggest momma's boys? Snoop Dogg takes the lead with 58 mentions of his mother. Runner up is 2 Chainz, who raps about his momma 51 times. In third place is 2Pac, with 24 mom-drops. See the the top 5 results, and an honorable mention in LyricFind's infographic.

LyricFind's recently launched service, LyricMerch is carrying on the hip-hop Mother's Day theme with their very own Mother's Day collection.

About LyricFind
LyricFind is the world’s leader in licensed lyrics and has licensing from over 4,000 music publishers in 100 countries, including all the majors: Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing and Kobalt. LyricFind has built a quality-controlled, vetted database of lyrics available for licensing and synchronized technology. Behind the scenes, LyricFind tracks, reports, and pays royalties to publishers on a song-by-song and territory-by-territory basis.

LyricFind, the World’s largest lyric licensing service, is proud to announce its new partnership with UK record labels association, the BPI.

This collaboration will enable the BPI to utilise fully licensed lyrics across all of its marketing and social media initiatives, particularly in relation to the BRIT Awards, the Mercury Prize and its Platinum, Gold and Silver sales certifications.

In licensing lyric displays, LyricFind will guarantee the legal use of artists’ work while contributing royalties to songwriters and rightsholders. So when the BPI or one of its associated organisations license a lyric, LyricFind will ensure that rightsholders receive due payment.

Protecting the rights of writers and underscoring the value of their lyrics is at the core of this partnership –explains LyricFind’s Chief Revenue Officer, Will Mills: “The BPI and LyricFind are united in highlighting songwriters’ creativity and in increasing the value of their lyrics across all digital services.”

Giuseppe De Cristofano, Director of Digital BPI & BRIT Awards, adds: “Protecting music copyright is at the heart of the BPI’s mission, and we’re proud to work with LyricFind to ensure that songwriters and rightsholders are rewarded for use of their work.”

As part of this agreement, lyrics will be featured on The BRIT Awards and Mercury Prize social platforms leading up to and during both events. The BRIT Awards 2018 with Mastercard will be broadcast live on ITV at 8pm GMT on February 21^st, 2018 and streamed worldwide outside of the UK on the official BRIT Awards YouTube channel.

This partnership is the latest in LyricFind’s company mission to innovate and add value to creators’ lyrics in the digital realm and beyond, and follows on from LyricFind’s partnership with The Recording Academy in 2016.

The global lyrics licensing market leader LyricFind, also collaborates with music industry media authority Billboard on the first-ever lyric-driven charts (LyricFind Global and LyricFind US), Record of The Day for the LyricFind UK Chart, and The Music Network in Australia for the Australian Version.

LyricFind has licensing from over 4,000 music publishers, including all the majors: Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony-ATV, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing and Kobalt – and has also built a quality-controlled, verified database of those lyrics available for licensing and synchronised technology.

This year LyricFind is also launching the world’s first verified and licensed lyric translations for thousands of top titles in dozens of appropriate languages. Behind-the-scenes, LyricFind also tracks, reports, and pays royalties to publishers on a song-by-song and territory-by-territory basis.

Whether you are single or taken, there’s a Valentine’s Day anthem out there for you. This year, in the weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day, LyricFind has taken a look at top trending lyrics about love and heartbreak around the world.

Love is in the air in Australia, where Camila Cabello’s Havana has the highest percentage gains. The song was searched 273,450% more than its heartbreak song counterpart, Where’s My Love, by SYML. However, in the United Kingdom, breaking up seems to be this year’s Valentine’s Day theme, with Strangers by Sigrid trending higher than its love-song counterpart, More Than You Know by Axwell /\ Ingrosso.

No matter what you’re feeling this Valentine’s Day, let the lyrical power of a song speak to you.

About LyricFind
LyricFind is the world’s leader in licensed lyrics and has licensing from over 4,000 music publishers in 100 countries, including all the majors: Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing and Kobalt. LyricFind has built a quality-controlled, vetted database of lyrics available for licensing and synchronized technology. Behind the scenes, LyricFind tracks, reports, and pays royalties to publishers on a song-by-song and territory-by-territory basis.

There are those lines in songs that say it all, simply and perfectly. Now you can emblazon these lines on high-quality t-shirts, caps, mugs, and even shower curtains--and do it legally, giving back to your favorite songwriters and artists.
 

LyricMerch is a new consumer-facing lyrics service from LyricFind, the pioneering company that brought fully legal lyrics to search engines, lyric sites, and music streaming services around the world. LyricMerch draws on LyricFind’s database of millions of lyrics and allows fans to put over one hundred thousand licensed lyrics on a wide range of clothing and household items.
 

Just select the lines you’d like, format them as desired from an easy-to-use design interface, and the service will custom print your creation. Meanwhile, rightsholders get royalty payments for the use of their work.
 

“We see this as a win-win for songwriters and artists, and for fans who love their lyrics,” says Darryl Ballantyne, CEO of LyricFind. “LyricMerch also expands the income possibilities for lyrics rightsholders, helping them make the most of an asset that is growing in significance in the digital era.”
 

LyricMerch also offers a selection of pre-made designs from LyricMerch’s in-house design team, and will create original designs for artists or labels when they need unique merch for an upcoming release or tour. LyricFind will also partner with design-conscious artists and their teams, as well as social media influencers, to craft just the right product that reflects their vision and sound. At launch, LyricMerch is only available to users in Canada and the United States.
 

This is the first consumer-facing offering from the pioneers of lyric licensing. Founded over a decade ago, LyricFind has made it its mission to bring lyrics out of the shadows and into fully legal usage, turning what was once an industry loss leader into a true asset. Lyrics dominate music-related searches, direct fans to their favorite tracks, and promise to dominate voice command.
 

With LyricMerch, lyrics are poised to impact the world of style, as well. “Now that lyrics have been associated once again with recordings, it’s time for them to expand further,” says Catherine Fournier, LyricFind’s Marketing Manager “The most memorable part of many songs is now a new fashion statement.”

Chester Bennington, Chris Cornell, Prince, David Bowie and just recently Glen Campbell. All deaths within the past year or so that have devastated fans. This series of deaths has increased attention to these artists’ catalogs tenfold and revealed enlightening data related to the ways in which fans choose to honor and remember these recently deceased artists.
 

One such way is reminiscing over lyrics. The recent passing of Chester Bennington had Linkin Park storming onto the LyricFind Billboard charts, securing 13 of the top 15 spots on the U.S. chart, including the entire top 10, and nine of the top 10 spots on the Global list.
 

Based on web searches tracked by LyricFind, the highest surge in lyric searches happens the day after an artist passes. Fan searches for lyrics of Bowie songs increased 1,044% the day after he died compared to the day prior.  More than Harry Styles, Miley Cyrus, or Bruno Mars, Billboard U.S. and Global Lyrics charts (powered by LyricFind) displayed Soundgarden and Audioslave in seven of the top 10 spots immediately following Chris Cornell’s death. “Fell On Black Days” had a 25,542% increase in lyric searches alone.

Even three weeks after each respective artist’s death, lyric searches remain well above the average search for lyrics before their death.  Three weeks after Bowie died, searches remained 234% higher than the average search that occurred before his death. The way fans engage with their favorite artists during the grieving process says a lot about how they connect with the artform.

As to the types of songs fans search for while mourning these losses, there seems to be a direct correlation to the death itself. The day after Prince’s death (April 22, 2016), “Sometimes It Snows In April” experienced a 454,750% increase. And following Chester Bennington’s suicide, Linkin Park’s “Shadow of the Day,”  a song about goodbyes, experienced a 10,431% increase.

“Lyrics offer an intimate glimpse into emotions and stories behind the hits.  After an artist passes away, experiencing the lyrics to their songs, according to the data, seems to be one of the more popular ways to mark their loss,” says Darryl Ballantyne, Founder and CEO of LyricFind.   

About LyricFind:

LyricFind is the world’s leader in licensed lyrics with 100+ clients worldwide including, Google, YouTube, Amazon, Pandora, Deezer, Microsoft, Shazam, SoundHound, The Recording Academy, Billboard and many others. LyricFind licenses from over 4,000 music publishers, including all the majors: Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing and Kobalt. It has built a quality-controlled, vetted database of lyrics available for licensing and synchronized technology in 100 countries. Behind the scenes, LyricFind tracks, reports, and pays royalties to publishers on a song-by-song and territory-by-territory basis.

1. Include lyrics on your website. You can create a whole page dedicated to lyrics, or even offer a downloadable PDF for fans, in exchange for an email.

2. Use lyrics on social media to engage fans. Include lyric snippets in your social media posts and tweets, when you share a video or audio track, when you post a picture from a gig, rehearsal, studio session, or epic brunch.

3. Post playful photos of your lyrics to Instagram and social media. Post-its, flyers, chalk… they all suggest quirky, fun ways to put your lyrics out there. Need something more serious? Try your hand at something more calligraphic, or track down a letterpress and commission a few printed cards.

4. Make lyric videos to promote your new song. Lots of bands with big marketing budgets are opting out of the big produced video, and looking for a simpler way. Indie musicians can, too. Start with a straightforward lyric video. If you’re not a whizz at motion graphics or After Effects, try Superstring.

5. You can also go lo-fi for your lyric video. It can be as simple and impromptu as Bob Dylan’s iconic video for Don’t Look Back. Get out the poster board and markers, gather your friends and get creative. Find approaches that capture your artistic aesthetic and that feature your words.

6. Get your lyrics into the publishing pipeline (and onto streaming platforms and other services). Publishing has opened up and is now accessible to artists at all stages of their careers, thanks to aggregators like The Harry Fox Agency or Songtrust. As LyricFind works directly with these aggregators (and many more), it makes it easier for your lyrics to become discoverable through platforms like Apple, Deezer, Shazam, and MetroLyrics. Look into what publishing services your distributor offers. Make the most of them.

7. Make merch with your lyrics. Your song’s words would look perfect emblazoned on a t- shirt. Later this year, LyricFind is entering the merch scene with a new on-demand product that allows fans and consumers to print legally licensed lyrics on many kinds of merchandise.

8. Make lyric posters. Remember that letter press idea? Why not print up a few dozen (or thousand) posters or flyer-sized arrangements of popular lines from your fans’ favorite songs? Or find other creative ways to present your lyrics visually.

9. Are you artistically inclined? Are you a doodler? Make an old-school zine-style lyric chapbook for fans, as special thank-yous or perks. Print it, jot some fun notes or little drawings on it, and toss it on the copy machine.

10. Make sheet music or charts for a song. It’s not hard to generate the chords or tablature for many songs. Check out Ultimate Guitar or Fender to make your own sheet music for fans to play along with.

The song “Despacito” by Puerto Rican pop artist Luis Fonsi featuring Puerto Rican rapper Daddy Yankee has become a global sensation. The remix, which features Justin Bieber singing in English and Spanish, has dominated Billboard’s Top 100 list for the fifth week, hitting charts worldwide, and is shaping up to be the song of the summer. The chart topper is originally a non-English song, sung in Spanish.

Could this be the long awaited watershed moment for non-English hits? It just might be.

The majority of global hit songs are English-language songs. The last non-English hit was Gangnam Style by the South Korean musician Psy, powered by a viral video. It’s been a long time since everyone was singing “Macarena” by Los Del Rio, the last song primarily in Spanish to top the Billboard Hot 100 in 1996, which peaked with the Bayside Boys Remix. Hits in other languages seem to be the exception, not the rule.

Then why is everyone searching for the lyrics for “Despacito”? Data from LyricFind, the world’s leader in lyric licensing, indicates that the song has garnered over 20 million displays, surpassing all other songs of the summer, including DJ Khaled’s “I’m The One”, which also features Justin Bieber. US fans have made the most searches for the lyrics, followed by Mexico and Germany. When it comes to lyric searches for the remix featuring Justin Bieber, Mexico has made the most searches, followed by Argentina, then the US.

“We think this shows how non-English songs and their lyrics are becoming just as compelling for listeners as English-language songs,” says Robert Singerman, VP of International Publishing at LyricFind. “We’re entering an era where lyric language will become less of an issue.” Tracks will start to speak for themselves--and appear in translations.

The popularity of “Despacito” shows it’s time to think beyond the English language when it comes to hit songs. Thanks to LyricFind’s upcoming translation feature, the meaning of songs of all languages will soon be unlocked to audiences around the world. Integration of lyric translation in apps, platforms and streaming services is on its way, enabling music to literally be the global language it has been touted to be for centuries. Meanwhile, we asked LyricFind’s translation team to tell us what the lyrics to Despacito say. Here’s their translation and some insights they shared with us about how to interpret it:

Come on over in my direction
So thankful for that, it's such a blessin', yeah
Turn every situation into heaven, yeah
Oh, you are
My sunrise on the darkest day
Got me feelin' some kind of way

Make me wanna savor every moment slowly, slowly
You fit me, tailor-made love, how you put it on
Got the only key, know how to turn it on
The way you nibble on my ear, the only words I wanna hear
Baby, take it slow so we can last long

Oh, you, you are the magnet and I'm the metal
I keep getting closer and setting up the plan
Just thinking of it raises my heartbeat (oh yeah)
I, I'm already liking it more than usual
All my senses are asking for more
This needs to be taken with no hurry

Slowly
I want to smell your neck slowly
Let me whisper things in your ear
So that you'll remember if you're not with me
Slowly
I want to undress you with kisses slowly
Put my signature on the walls of your labyrinth
And make your whole body a manuscript
(Up, up, up, up, up)

I want to see your hair dance
I want to be your rhythm
And show my mouth
Your favorite places

(Favorite, favorite, baby)
Let me overstep your danger zones
Until I provoke your screams
And you forget your last name

If I ask you for a kiss, come, give it to me
I know you're thinking about it
I've been trying for a while
Baby, this is giving and giving it
You know that your heart with me makes you go boom boom
You know that that girl is looking for my boom boom
Come, taste from my mouth to see how it tastes
I want, I want, I want to see how much love you can take in
I’m in no hurry, I want to take the trip
Let's start slow, and then wild

Little step by little step, smooth and gentle
We keep getting closer, little by little
When you kiss me with such skill
I see that you're malice with delicateness
Step by step, smooth and gentle
We keep getting closer, little by little
It’s just that such beauty is a puzzle
But to solve it I have the piece here
Listen!

Slowly
I want to smell your neck slowly
Let me whisper things in your ear
So that you'll remember if you're not with me
Slowly
I want to undress you with kisses slowly
Put my signature on the walls of your labyrinth
And make your whole body a manuscript
(Up, up, up, up, up)

I want to see your hair dance
I want to be your rhythm
And show my mouth
Your favorite places
(Favorite, favorite, baby)
Let me overstep your danger zones
Until I provoke your screams
And you forget your last name

Slowly
This is how we do it down in Puerto Rico
I just wanna hear you screaming, “Oh my god!”
I can move forever when I am with you
Dance!

Little step by little step, smooth and gentle
We're sticking together, little by little
To show my mouth
Your favorite places
(Favorite, favorite, baby)
Little step by little step, smooth and gentle
We keep getting closer, little by little
Until I provoke screams (Fonsi)
And you forget your last name (D.Y.)
Slowly

LyricFind’s translator Raymond Robert has a few tips for interpreting the translation. First of all, “despacito” is a diminutive form of “despacio” meaning slow, which expresses a sense of endearment or intimacy. It could be roughly translated as “nice and slow” or “very slowly.” The song’s chorus may read as abrasive or awkward in English, but in Spanish it is innocent and sweet, and meant to be read figuratively, not literally. The translation of “Sube,” continues Robert, is “go up” or “goes up.” This word is common in pop songs to create a sense of growing energy or hype. And that’s definitely where the song has gone, up, up to the very top. Sube, sube.

1. Include lyrics on your website. You can create a whole page dedicated to lyrics, or even offer a downloadable PDF for fans, in exchange for an email.

2. Use lyrics on social media to engage fans. Include lyric snippets in your social media posts and tweets, when you share a video or audio track, when you post a picture from a gig, rehearsal, studio session, or epic brunch.

3. Post playful photos of your lyrics to Instagram and social media. Post-its, flyers, chalk… they all suggest quirky, fun ways to put your lyrics out there. Need something more serious? Try your hand at something more calligraphic, or track down a letterpress and commission a few printed cards.

4. Make lyric videos to promote your new song. Lots of bands with big marketing budgets are opting out of the big produced video, and looking for a simpler way. Indie musicians can, too. Start with a straightforward lyric video. If you’re not a whizz at motion graphics or After Effects, try Superstring.

5. You can also go lo-fi for your lyric video. It can be as simple and impromptu as Bob Dylan’s iconic video for Don’t Look Back. Get out the poster board and markers, gather your friends and get creative. Find approaches that capture your artistic aesthetic and that feature your words.

6. Get your lyrics into the publishing pipeline (and onto streaming platforms and other services). Publishing has opened up and is now accessible to artists at all stages of their careers, thanks to aggregators like The Harry Fox Agency or Songtrust. As LyricFind works directly with these aggregators (and many more), it makes it easier for your lyrics to become discoverable through platforms like Apple, Deezer, Shazam, and MetroLyrics. Look into what publishing services your distributor offers. Make the most of them.

7. Make merch with your lyrics. Your song’s words would look perfect emblazoned on a t- shirt. Later this year, LyricFind is entering the merch scene with a new on-demand product that allows fans and consumers to print legally licensed lyrics on many kinds of merchandise.

8. Make lyric posters. Remember that letter press idea? Why not print up a few dozen (or thousand) posters or flyer-sized arrangements of popular lines from your fans’ favorite songs? Or find other creative ways to present your lyrics visually.

9. Are you artistically inclined? Are you a doodler? Make an old-school zine-style lyric chapbook for fans, as special thank-yous or perks. Print it, jot some fun notes or little drawings on it, and toss it on the copy machine.

10. Make sheet music or charts for a song. It’s not hard to generate the chords or tablature for many songs. Check out Ultimate Guitar or Fender to make your own sheet music for fans to play along with.

This Valentine’s Day, love is in the air. Around the globe, the lovelorn are searching for lyrics from hit songs to capture their emotions.

But lovers everywhere are drawn to different tunes. LyricFind analyzed the top trending lyrics about love in eleven different countries during the weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day, to see what lyric searches said about local takes on Cupid’s handiwork. Sentiments ranged from erotic fascination to undying devotion.

What lyrics quicken the world’s pulse? In Spain, it’s the birds and the bees (NEIKED’s “Sexual” featuring Dyo is at the top of lyric searches). Italy takes on more of a protective love as Clean Bandit’s “Rockabye” details the enduring love of a mother for her child. In France, Brazil, and Canada, love causes heartbreak and lovesickness. In the US, Mexico, and the UK, enduring affection is what they’re looking for. Germany and Chile, on the other hand, relate more to a young, reckless and naive love. Down under, the Aussies are hooked on passion and lust.

Love may be universal, but romance comes in a thousand different lyrical shades.

About LyricFind
LyricFind is the world’s leader in licensed lyrics and has licensing from over 4,000 music publishers in 100 countries, including all the majors: Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing and Kobalt. It has built a quality-controlled, vetted database of lyrics available for licensing and synchronized technology. Behind the scenes, LyricFind tracks, reports, and pays royalties to publishers on a song-by-song and territory-by-territory basis.

Austria-based language learning company Linguician (www.linguician.com) is teaming up with the world’s leading lyrics provider LyricFind for one clear reason: Lyrics make it fun and effective to learn and perfect another language.

Music has been used as a memory booster since time immemorial, and its power is still in full force. Not only do lyrics have a knack for getting stuck in our heads, but they’re the perfect enhancement to vocabulary acquisition.

Linguician, available for free online, with a mobile version expected to launch later this year, harnesses this power elegantly. Users can select from a wide catalog of music videos, picking their favourites in their target language. The service introduces users to the lyrics, letting them learn new words and expressions. It then guides them through fun games that prompt them to fill in the blanks or choose the correct translations all while the language learner moves in time to the beat.

"With Linguician, the user can unlock the associative power of music for language acquisition,” explains Alexander Rietzler, Founder and CEO of Linguician. “Learning new vocabularies suddenly becomes possible without feeling the effort." The app’s strongest language is currently English, but it also supports language learning in Spanish, Portuguese, German, Italian, and French. “New videos are being added daily,” adds Rietzler.

LyricFind supplies the legal lyrics, giving the platform access to the dozens of languages the company has vetted and licensed from hundreds of publishers around the world. It is an original use of the service’s product, one that shows the full, diverse possibilities for lyrics in the digital age.

“We are excited to partner with a company that takes language learning to the next level,” says Roy Hennig, LyricFind’s Vice President of Sales. “By using lyrics as a means of teaching, Linguician forges a new and unique path for lyric licensing.”

About LyricFind
LyricFind is the world’s leader in licensed lyrics and has licensing from over 4,000 music publishers in 100 countries, including all the majors: Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing and Kobalt. It has built a quality-controlled, vetted database of lyrics available for licensing and synchronized technology. Behind the scenes, LyricFind tracks, reports, and pays royalties to publishers on a song-by-song and territory-by-territory basis.

About Linguician
Linguician is the first platform that offers individualized and personalized language learning content based on music and lyrics. It is dedicated to designing a language learning experience that is as entertaining and playful as possible.

The year-end holidays have their own songbook. It’s a favourite time to get together and sing some seasonal classics, or launch into a spirited solo in the car or at the office party. And while we all know the songs, how many of us know all the words?

LyricFind, the world leader in lyrics display, has ranked the top ten most searched for holiday lyrics. The top 10 are almost a complete salute to midcentury songwriting, apart from Mariah Carey’s essential if not viral holiday hit “All I Want For Christmas Is You”. “It’s no surprise that the majority of holiday lyrics being searched for are the originals,” says Catherine Fournier, LyricFind’s Marketing Manager. “It’s a time of comfort and tradition, and the lyrics in these songs reflect that.”

LyricFind is the licensing partner for major search engines, streaming services, lyric websites, and other music platforms across the globe, and gathers data from millions of searches and displays.

Top Ten Most Displayed Holiday Lyrics

    Artist           Track

1    Bing Crosby       White Christmas

2    Mariah Carey       All I Want for Christmas Is You

3    Eartha Kitt       Santa Baby

4    Elvis Presley       Blue Christmas

5    Johnny Mathis       When a Child Is Born

6    Bobby Helms       Jingle Bell Rock

7    Frank Sinatra       Jingle Bells

8    Brenda Lee       Rockin Around the Christmas Tree

9    Harry Belafonte  Mary's Boy Child

10    Dean Martin       Baby, It’s Cold Outside

About LyricFind
LyricFind is the world’s leader in licensed lyrics with 100+ clients worldwide including, Google, YouTube, Amazon, Pandora, Deezer, Microsoft, Shazam, SoundHound, The Recording Academy, Billboard and many others. LyricFind licenses from over 4,000 music publishers, including all the majors: Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing and Kobalt. It has built a quality-controlled, vetted database of lyrics available for licensing and synchronized technology in 100 countries. Behind the scenes, LyricFind tracks, reports, and pays royalties to publishers on a song-by-song and territory-by-territory basis.

This year, lyrics have made headlines across the world. From Bob Dylan’s writings being recognized with a Nobel Prize this year, to hip hop lyrics impacting education and the US presidential election, to the recent 2017 GRAMMY Nominations, lyrics continue to have both a huge musical and cultural impact around the world. For 2016’s year in review, LyricFind has rounded up the top lyric displays of 2016.

LyricFind is the World's Leader in licensed lyrics, with more than 4,000 music publishers signed and utilized by more than 100 services including Google, Amazon Music, Deezer, Pandora, Shazam, Microsoft and iHeartMedia among many more. The majority of places where you see lyrics online and in your favorite music services are powered by LyricFind.

LyricFind also provides four different charts every week, working with Billboard (Global, US charts), Record of the Day (UK) and The Music Network (Australia).

The Top Ten Lyrics of 2016

Three out of the five songs nominated for a GRAMMY in the Song of the Year category, which honors the songwriter over the actual record itself, find themselves in the top 10 most searched for lyrics of 2016. These include Justin Bieber’s “Love Yourself”, Adele’s “Hello”, and Lukas Graham’s “7 Years”. Earlier this year, Justin Bieber’s  “Love Yourself” marked LyricFind’s 15 billionth lyric display, and the company has tracked another 2 billion displays since then.

The Recording Academy and LyricFind are continuing their licensing partnership for marketing and social media initiatives. In licensing lyric displays to The Recording Academy, LyricFind guarantees the legal use of artists’ work while contributing royalties to songwriters.

LyricFind has had a banner year, creating new markets for its product and forging new partnerships around the world. From Spain to China, and Japan to Brazil, the Toronto-based firm has pushed to make licensed, monetized lyrics part of the music scene everywhere. LyricFind’s partnership with Google not only transformed the way music lovers search for lyrics, but has also made lyrics more accessible and visible across the #1 search platform.

About LyricFind
LyricFind is the world’s leader in licensed lyrics with 100+ clients worldwide including, Google, YouTube, Amazon, Pandora, Deezer, Microsoft, Shazam, SoundHound, The Recording Academy, Billboard and many others. LyricFind licenses from over 4,000 music publishers, including all the majors: Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing and Kobalt. It has built a quality-controlled, vetted database of lyrics available for licensing and synchronized technology in 100 countries. Behind the scenes, LyricFind tracks, reports, and pays royalties to publishers on a song-by-song and territory-by-territory basis.

LyricFind, the world leader in lyric licensing and display, has teamed up with Musica.com, the most visited Spanish-language lyric site.

“This is an exciting agreement for us as Musica.com is one of the largest international lyric sites in the world,” says Darryl Ballantyne, LyricFind CEO. “The majority of its traffic comes from areas where licensed lyrics display has not gotten much traction yet, like Mexico and Argentina. It’s great to bring licenced lyrics to these markets and properly compensate songwriters and publishers.”

Based in Spain, Musica.com is the latest of the big lyric websites to partner with LyricFind and adopt its licensing model. The relationship ensures that songwriters and publishers get paid for the use of their work, and that sites have accurate, vetted lyrics available in several languages.

“At the present moment, Musica.com has over 14 million fans on Facebook and 75 million visitors each month,”  Javier Garcia, Musica.com CEO and co-founder explains. "It is a big step to globally license our lyrics in order to offer them to our Spanish-speaking audience. Our aim is to continue being the lyric reference for music on the internet."

“Musica.com is the largest and most trafficked international lyric website,” adds Roy Hennig, LyricFind’s Vice President of Sales. “While other sites may have larger audiences in the US, Musica.com reaches a much wider audience by tapping into Europe and Central and South America.”

About LyricFind

LyricFind is the world’s leader in licensed lyrics with 100+ clients worldwide including, Google, YouTube, Amazon, Pandora, Deezer, Microsoft, Shazam, SoundHound, The Recording Academy, Billboard and many others. LyricFind licenses from over 4,000 music publishers, including all the majors: Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing and Kobalt. It has built a quality-controlled, vetted database of lyrics available for licensing and synchronized technology in 100 countries. Behind the scenes, LyricFind tracks, reports, and pays royalties to publishers on a song-by-song and territory-by-territory basis.

About Musica.com

Founded in 2005, Musica.com is the most visited music site among the Spanish-speaking community. At the present moment , the site has over 75 million visitors each month and over 14 million facebook fans. Musica.com contains a massive music database and has given the opportunityto emerging artist to promote their music and connect with their fans.

You don’t have to understand the voice of the sea to want to sing along. That’s the takeaway from the viral success of “Umino Koe,” a mesmerizing take on fairytale romance, mixing Japanese traditional elements and pop power, by Japanese chart toppers Begin and the haunting voice of singer and actor Kenta Kiritani.

Thanks to the world’s leading lyrics provider, LyricFind, and Japanese partner SyncPower, fans everywhere will be able to sing along to a Romanized version of the song. Added to LyricFind’s offerings by popular demand, the phonetic rendering of the Japanese lyrics will be available to clients like Amazon, Deezer, Shazam and many more.

“The request of a Romanized version of the song demonstrates that the power of lyrics goes beyond message or meaning alone,” says LyricFind’s Chief Revenue Officer, Will Mills. “You don’t need to know what the words mean to want to follow along. Lyrics increase engagement and appreciation, no matter what the language.”

When the video for “Umino Koe,” part of a popular fantasy-inspired campaign for mobile company KDDI, hit YouTube in 2015, no one expected it would connect with listeners across the world. It started to rack up views, and then began making waves on iTunes. At writing in October 2016, the number of views on YouTube has climbed to nearly 60,000,000, and the video continues to attract viewers from around the world.

“We are thrilled to see people of all different backgrounds enjoying this Japanese song. It’s amazing to be able to connect the world through lyrics and give people the opportunity to experience music in a deeper way,” says Rina Oka, Chief Marketing Officer of SyncPower.

About LyricFind:

LyricFind is the world’s leader in licensed lyrics and has licensing from over 4,000 music publishers in 100 countries, including all the majors: Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing and Kobalt. It has built a quality-controlled, vetted database of lyrics available for licensing and synchronized technology. Behind the scenes, LyricFind tracks, reports, and pays royalties to publishers on a song-by-song and territory-by-territory basis.

About SyncPower:

SyncPower is a music content production, supply, and distribution company enabling people to fully enjoy music in the digital age. Founded in 2006 and based in Tokyo, SyncPower provides lyric search services, a media player app, and much more. Optimized timestamping for precisely synced lyrics and well-managed programming logic make it a powerful partner to myriad companies and platforms around the globe.

LyricFind, the world’s largest lyric licensing service, has partnered with the leading automatic content recognition service provider ACRCloud to integrate its lyrics ID into ACRCloud’s music fingerprinting catalog.

With this integration, developers using ACRCloud’s music recognition and radio airplay monitoring services will now be able to conveniently access lyrics directly on ACRCloud's music database without the need to look up lyrics on LyricFind’s database separately.

ACRCloud has indexed over 40 million tracks in its music fingerprinting catalog and has
integrated numerous identifiers such as ISRC, UPC, Spotify, iTunes/Apple Music, Youtube, Deezer, Music Story and now LyricFind within its own music database.

“We’re excited to partner with ACRCloud and make powering lyrics to their numerous partners as seamless as possible. We look forward to working on many new deals throughout Asia Pacific and beyond withthis partnership,” said Will Mills, LyricFind Chief Revenue Officer.

“Lyrics are a must-have component of music-related projects with a huge demand. LyricFind's
one-stop comprehensive licensed lyrics database access allows our developers to incorporate lyrics in a licensed manner conveniently into their projects via ACRCloud's easy integration,” said Tony Li, Co-Founder of ACRCloud.

About LyricFind

LyricFind is the world’s leader in licensed lyrics with 100+ clients worldwide including, Google, YouTube, Amazon, Pandora, Deezer, Microsoft, Shazam, SoundHound, The Recording Academy, Billboard and many others. LyricFind licenses from over 4,000 music publishers, including all the majors: Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing and Kobalt. It has built a quality-controlled, vetted database of lyrics available for licensing and synchronized technology. Behind the scenes, LyricFind tracks, reports, and pays royalties to publishers on a song-by-song and territory-by-territory basis.

About ACRCloud

ACRCloud is a comprehensive automatic content recognition provider that has been ranked #1 in audio fingerprinting technology by the prestigious Music Information Retrieval Evaluation eXchange (MIREX) in 2015. With over 40 million tracks indexed in its music fingerprinting database, ACRCloud offers music recognition solution to partners like Xiaomi, Omusic and Peach amongst others.

LyricFind, the world’s leader in lyric licensing, and Anghami, the leading music streaming service in the Middle East and North Africa have concluded a lyrics integration deal. LyricFind’s world-leading lyrics will now be natively integrated into Anghami’s market-leading platform in display and synchronized modes.

As a result of the deal, LyricFind’s extensive catalog of lyrics, which include lyrics in over a dozen languages, will appear on millions of screens and devices across GCC, Levant and North Africa. This is the latest step in LyricFind’s global expansion into the dynamic music markets of Asia and MENA. It’s a sign that, from China to Morocco, music is coming out of the shadows, into legally licensed, income-generating space. LyricFind has worked to make lyrics a part of this worldwide shift, closing more deals with publishers and service providers internationally than anyone else in the business.

“The MENA region is one of the emerging markets that will help drive more growth in the international digital music business. For multilingual markets like the MENA, lyrics are an important tool for fans to deepen their understanding and enjoyment of the music they love,” explains Will Mills, Chief Revenue Officer of LyricFind.

“Providing lyrics in partnership with LyricFind will boost engagement on Anghami because some of the joys of music are to sing along to feel more connected to the artist. It is part of our mission to provide this added value to music fans in the MENA region” adds Eddy Maroun, CEO and Co-Founder of Anghami.

Anghami has established itself as an increasingly popular way to listen to music and a bulwark of legal music streams in a region long dominated by piracy. Anghami features licensed content from leading Arabic labels such as Rotana, Platinum Records, and Mazzika, building the largest Arabic catalog ever. Anghami also features music from the major international labels such as Universal, Sony, Warner and is continuously licensing new content from major global aggregators.

About LyricFind:

LyricFind is the world’s leader in licensed lyrics with 100+ clients worldwide including, Google, YouTube, Amazon, Pandora, Deezer, Microsoft, Shazam, SoundHound, The Recording Academy, Billboard and many others. LyricFind licenses from over 4,000 music publishers, including all the majors: Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing and Kobalt. It has built a quality-controlled, vetted database of lyrics available for licensing and synchronized technology in 100 countries. Behind the scenes, LyricFind tracks, reports, and pays royalties to publishers on a song-by-song and territory-by-territory basis.

About Anghami:

Anghami is the leading music service in the MENA region. It is the #1 music app across app stores in MENA with a large catalog of 15 million songs. Having acquired around 20 million users since December 2012, it is the most prominent music venture in the region.

LyricFind, the world’s leading lyric licensing company, announces today it has delivered its 15 billionth lyric display, with over 4.2 billion of these displays coming in the last year alone. This significant milestone, with a huge rise in last year, demonstrates the importance of lyrics to consumers and the relevance they have within music services.

The 15 billionth lyric to be displayed was Justin Bieber’s “Love Yourself”, crossing the milestone threshold in January, 2016. Written by Justin Bieber, Ed Sheeran and Benjamin Levin, the lyrics to “Love Yourself” received more than 3.8 million displays within the month of January alone as it crossed the 15 billion benchmark.

“This 15 billion milestone is a fantastic testament to the power of lyrics and underscores the scale of which consumers across the web and music streaming services love lyrics,” confirms Darryl Ballantyne, LyricFind’s Founder and CEO. “Lyrics are now a must-have feature for music services and by working with the majority of the music streaming market, ISP’s and apps, we’ve enabled consumers to engage with lyrics directly within their preferred services.”

Music fans use lyrics to deepen their engagement with the latest songs and to get new perspectives on old favourites. Lyrics search also serves as a discovery method to identify new songs fans may have heard when they were out and about. These emerging songs are highlighted in LyricFind’s weekly LyricFind Charts on Billboard and The Music Network, which rank the top trending lyrics in the U.S., Australia, and Worldwide.

With recent deals signed in France, Brazil and Japan to the latest partnership with Google, LyricFind continues to champion the use and value of lyrics by making them more accessible to users around the world all while ensuring songwriters receive proper payment.

About LyricFind:

LyricFind is the world’s leader in licensed lyrics with 100+ clients worldwide including, Google, YouTube, Amazon, Pandora, Deezer, Microsoft, Shazam, SoundHound, The Recording Academy, Billboard and many others. LyricFind licenses from over 4,000 music publishers, including all the majors: Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing and Kobalt. It has built a quality-controlled, vetted database of lyrics available for licensing and synchronized technology. Behind the scenes, LyricFind tracks, reports, and pays royalties to publishers on a song-by-song and territory-by-territory basis.

LyricFind, the world’s largest lyric licensing service, has partnered with Google to expand lyric offerings. Adding lyrics from over 4,000 publishers to Google’s search results and within Google Play Music, LyricFind now provides licensing for lyrics displayed in Google’s search results as well as in the music app.

“We’re happy to expand the depth and quality of lyrics available on Google’s services,” says LyricFind CEO Darryl Ballantyne. “We’re working together to make lyrics available to a larger audience in a faster and more efficient way.”

LyricFind has been the main driver behind creating a legal and global lyric infrastructure for all platforms, and its partnership with Google further strengthens this mission. LyricFind collects new royalties for songwriters and rightsholders, and benefits music fans who engage more easily than ever with lyrics that inspire them.

By helping to source lyrics for Google’s search results and Google Play Music, LyricFind continues to demonstrate how lyrics data can be integrated into a variety of services for music discovery and monetization.

About LyricFind:

LyricFind is the world’s leader in licensed lyrics and has licensing from over 4,000 music publishers in 100 countries, including all the majors: Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing and Kobalt. It has built a quality-controlled, vetted database of lyrics available for licensing and synchronized technology. Behind the scenes, LyricFind tracks, reports, and pays royalties to publishers on a song-by-song and territory-by-territory basis.

LyricFind, the world’s leader in lyric licensing, has partnered with Tratore, the biggest distributor for independent music in Brazil since 2002. Now, the more than 5,000 artists on Tratore can have their lyrics displayed on lyrics sites and synchronized with digital music platforms such as Deezer and Shazam.

In just a week, 1,000 of Tratore’s artists opted-in to the agreement, bringing more than 5,000 Portuguese lyrics into LyricFind’s ever-expanding database of lyrics, for display worldwide. With recent deals in Japan and France, the company is committed to bringing together the most comprehensive set of legal lyrics in the world, in several languages to 100 countries. Whenever a lyric is searched for via search engines like Google or displayed in a streaming service like Pandora, the rightsholder earns royalties.

“LyricFind is very happy to work with a great friend and colleague in the industry, Mauricio Bussab and his staff, artists, labels, publishers, and songwriters at Tratore,” says Robert Singerman, LyricFind’s VP International Publishing. “As one of our most significant publishing collaborations, we welcome Tratore’s clients’ lyrics to our database to be shared worldwide.”

"We are excited to partner with LyricFind, the leading company in the legal lyrics field. No matter how much the music business landscape changes, one thing remains constant: authors and composers will always own their work and should able to properly monetize it,” notes Bussab. “LyricFind will be an important partner to help our artists achieve this goal."

Tratore’s artists can integrate their song lyrics through LyricFind by signing the Digi_Tratore form on Fonomatic, the company’s control panel. The form is intended for musicians who write their own songs and possess all rights to their catalog, as royalty payments will vary by usage.

In addition to Tratore, independent Brazilian publishers can also exhibit and monetize their lyrics with LyricFind through ABMI (Brazilian Association of Independent Music) in Rio de Janeiro and Audio Porto, the creative hub in Porto Alegre.

About LyricFind

The leader in the legal lyrics space, LyricFind has not only amassed licensing from over 4,000 music publishers, including all the majors: Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony-ATV, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing and Kobalt – but has also built a quality-controlled, vetted database of those lyrics available for licensing in 100 countries. Behind the scenes, LyricFind tracks, reports, and pays royalties to those publishers on a song-by-song and territory-by-territory basis.

About Tratore

Tratore is Brazil's biggest independent music distributor, commercializing albums, EPs and singles at digital and physical stores since 2002. The company currently holds a catalogue of over 5,000 artists.

LyricFind, le leader mondial de la licence de diffusion de paroles de chansons, a signé un accord pour l’exploitation du répertoire des paroles de chansons françaises et parallèlement  un accord avec Music Story, le fournisseur de métadonnées de musique, leader du marché. Music Story représentera LyricFind pour son développement commercial en France.

Ce partenariat donnera à LyricFind un accès, via la SEAM (Société des Editeurs et Auteurs de Musique), à  la Base d’œuvres de l’Édition Musicale (BOEM),  base de données légale qui propose un accès en B to B aux paroles de chansons des éditeurs membres de la CSDEM.

Music Story sera  le représentant exclusif en France de LyricFind pour les clients qui souhaitent obtenir une licence des paroles via LyricFind. Music Story facilitera également la diffusion de ces licences en assurant la distribution des données, la vente et le support technique.

Grâce à ce partenariat avec la CSDEM, LyricFind va maintenant pouvoir donner à ses clients l'accès aux paroles de chansons du répertoire français, donnant un réel avantage à ses clients Européens tels que Deezer.

« En tant que client LyricFind,  nous sommes ravis d’avoir accès aux paroles de la CSDEM tout en pouvant s’appuyer sur des partenaires de confiance comme LyricFind et Music Story » déclare Ludovic Pouilly, SVP Institutional & Music Industry Relations chez Deezer. « L’ajout des paroles de chanson françaises à notre service va sans aucun doute améliorer agréablement l’expérience de nos utilisateurs ».

« Cet accord donne un réel élan à LyricFind sur le marché français et renforce notre position de fournisseur international de paroles de chansons avec licence », explique Darryl Ballantyne, CEO de LyricFind. « C’est magnifique de pouvoir annoncer un nouveau partenariat international, cette fois en France, juste au moment où le MIDEM commence. Cela souligne l’importance des paroles de chansons en tant que nouvelle source de revenu pour les auteurs et compositeurs, et celle de la demande pour les licences associée. »

Pour parler directement avec un membre d'une des parties prenantes de cet accord, vous pouvez contacter :

Music Story : francois.souflet@music-story.com             
LyricFind : info@lyricfind.com
CSDEM : Angélique Dascier adascier@csdem.org

A propos de LyricFInd :

LyricFind est le leader mondial des paroles avec licence et gère aujourd’hui les licences pour plus de 4 000 éditeurs de musique répartis dans 100 pays, incluant toutes les marques majeures : Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing et Kobalt.  LyricFind a construit une base de données faisant l'objet d'un contrôle de qualité strict, intégrant des technologies de gestion de licences et de synchronisation. Au-delà, LyricFind effectue le suivi, rapporte et assure les paiements aux Éditeurs par oeuvre et par territoire d'utilisation.

A propos de Music Story :

Music Story est un fournisseur de métadonnées de musique. L’entreprise effectue le rapprochement, la désambiguïsation et l'enrichissement des métadonnées  des catalogues des producteurs. Elle propose une couverture internationale des données à ses clients plates-formes de la musique digitale, médias et autres professionnels de l’industrie de la musique. Avec cet accord,  Music Story ajoute la commercialisation des paroles à son offre et renforce sa valeur ajoutée sur les métadonnées. Ces nouveaux partenariat avec des leaders mondiaux comme LyricFind, Deezer ou des Éditeurs professionnels comme la CSDEM, confirment Music Story en tant partenaire de confiance à l’échelle internationale sur le marché des métadonnées de musique.

A propos de la CSDEM :

La CSDEM (Chambre Syndicale de l’Edition Musicale) regroupe plus de 110 membres (Éditeurs français indépendants et majors), elle représente et défend la profession et les intérêts nationaux et internationaux de ses membres, elle assure la promotion, le développement de la musique, et la défense des droits d’auteurs.

Les éditeurs de musique réunis au sein de la CSDEM œuvrent depuis plusieurs années pour que les paroles de chansons soient diffusées le plus largement possible dans le respect des droits des créateurs. Ainsi, la CSDEM a développé depuis près de 5 ans une base légale de paroles de chansons (BOEM) les rendant disponibles sur  plusieurs sites français, tout en continuant à lutter contre les utilisations illicites de nombreux sites de paroles.

La signature de cet accord avec Lyricfind complète l’offre de BOEM et ouvre aujourd’hui de nouvelles perspectives, LyricFind étant en un agrégateur de paroles à rayonnement international, cette licence permettra aux œuvres françaises d’être plus largement diffusées dans le monde entier

LyricFind, the world leader in legal lyric display licensing, has inked a deal to distribute French lyrics, and has signed an agreement with Music Story, the foremost music metadata provider in the market. Music Story will represent LyricFind for Sales and Business Development in France.

The partnership will give LyricFind access, through SEAM (French collective management organization dedicated to graphic reproduction rights), to CSDEM’s members extensive lyric catalogue, Base d’Œuvres de l’Edition Musicale (BOEM), a legal lyrics database that makes lyrics accessible to companies who want to use them online to enhance their products and services.

Music Story will be the exclusive representative in France for LyricFind clients that wish to obtain song lyrics and their publishing rights. Music Story will also facilitate licensing by ensuring the provision of data, sales and technical support. In its deal, LyricFind will pay royalties to the publishing representative for the use of lyrics.

In its partnership with CSDEM, LyricFind will now be able to make additional French lyrics available to its clients, which comes as a great benefit for international clients like music streaming service Deezer who are based in Europe.

“As a LyricFind client, we are excited to have access to CSDEM’s French lyrics through reliable partners like LyricFind and Music Story,” states Ludovic Pouilly, SVP Institutional & Music Industry Relations at Deezer. “The addition of French lyrics to our service will undoubtedly enhance our users’ music experience and enjoyment.”

“This deal establishes LyricFind’s footing in the French market and reinforces our position as the world’s go-to provider of licensed lyrics,” explains LyricFind CEO, Darryl Ballantyne. “It’s great to announce yet another international partner, this time in France, right as MIDEM kicks off. It points to the importance of lyrics as an income stream for songwriters and to the global partnerships lyric licensing demands.”

To speak directly with any of the parties about the deal, please contact

Music Story: francois.souflet@music-story.com
LyricFind: info@lyricfind.com
CSDEM: Angélique Dascier adascier@csdem.org

About LyricFind

LyricFind is the world’s leader in licensed lyrics and has licensing from over 4,000 music publishers in 100 countries, including all the majors: Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing and Kobalt. It has built a quality-controlled, vetted database of lyrics available for licensing and synchronized technology. Behind the scenes, LyricFind tracks, reports, and pays royalties to publishers on a song-by-song and territory-by-territory basis.

About Music Story

Music Story is a music metadata provider. The company does the matching, disambiguation and enrichment of producers' metadata catalogues and proposes an international coverage of the data for its customers such as: digital music platforms, medias or professional of the music industry. With this agreement, Music Story will add licensed Lyrics to its offer and reinforce its capability to add value to its music metadata repository. Those new partnerships with main worldwide leaders like LyricFind, Deezer and professional publishers like CSDEM, will highlight the position of Music Story as a reliable international player on the music metadata market.

About CSDEM

CSDEM (French Music Publishers Association) which is comprised of more than 110 members (French publishing independents and majors) upholds the representation and defence of the profession and the national and international interests of its members, the promotion and development of music, and the defence of authors’ rights. The music publishers united through CSDEM have strived for many years to ensure the utmost circulation of their lyrics while assuring the full respect of their creators’ rights. Out of this, CSDEM developed a legal base gathering lyrics (BOEM) and set up an economic model with various French websites, while fighting against illicit uses of numerous lyrics websites. This agreement (licensing BOEM to LyricFind) opens up new perspectives, as LyricFind is a major international lyrics aggregator, offering a worldwide diffusion to French works.

LyricFind, the world's leader in lyric licensing, continues to expand its global presence through a new partnership with Japan-based SyncPower. LyricFind’s business-to-business platform now provides SyncPower with licensing rights to launch their PetitLyrics Player outside of Japan. With 3 million downloads to date and 22 million monthly views, LyricFind’s worldwide licensing will allow SyncPower’s PetitLyrics Player to gain higher traffic and usage rates from users around the globe.

LyricFind has been in the business of fusing advanced technology with strong music industry leadership for over a decade. SyncPower now joins LyricFind’s roster of esteemed clients, advancing the charge to provide complete and verified lyric data to countless websites and software applications for lyric searches, music streaming, download services, lyric videos, multilingual song releases, and community forums for lyric annotation.

SyncPower, founded in 2006, is one of the largest companies in Asia providing lyrics on a variety of devices, including smartphones and mobile phones, mobile device players, digital stereo players, car navigation systems, and more.

“We are excited and honoured to be working with SyncPower to further expand the international field of lyric licensing around the globe,” said LyricFind Vice President of Sales Roy Hennig.

SyncPower’s president, Masakazu Tomita, commented, “Our collaboration with LyricFind has allowed us to launch our music lyric apps and services on a global level, which has been a long-pending plan for us. Maximizing the experience and know-how of our services in the Japanese music market, we will expect to be able to distribute more lyrics to more users in cooperation with LyricFind."

About LyricFind:

LyricFind is the world’s leader in licensed lyrics and has licensing from over 4,000 music publishers in 100 countries, including all the majors: Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing and Kobalt. It has built a quality-controlled, vetted database of lyrics available for licensing and synchronized technology. Behind the scenes, LyricFind tracks, reports, and pays royalties to publishers on a song-by-song and territory-by-territory basis.

About SyncPower:

SyncPower is a music content production, supply, and distribution company enabling people to fully enjoy music in the digital age. Founded in 2006 and based in Tokyo, SyncPower provides lyric search services, a media player app, and much more. Optimized timestamping for precisely synced lyrics and well-managed programming logic make it a powerful partner to myriad companies and platforms around the globe.

This winter has been tough on rock stars.  Since November, music critics have written obituaries for Scott Weiland of Stone Temple Pilots, Lemmy Kilmister of Motörhead, David Bowie, and Glenn Frey of the Eagles.  This series of deaths has, in some cases, increased attention to the artists’ catalogs tenfold and revealed enlightening data related to the ways in which fans choose to honor and remember these recently deceased artists.

One such way is reminiscing over lyrics.  Based on web searches tracked by LyricFind, the highest surge in lyric searches happens the day after the artist passes. Fan searches for lyrics of Bowie songs increased 1,044% the day after he died compared to the day prior.  Lyric searches for songs by the Eagles jumped 429%, Motörhead lyrics searches increased by 107%, and STP lyrics saw the greatest percentage spike in searches at 1,384%.

More than Adele, Justin Bieber, or Taylor Swift, this week’s Billboard U.S. and Global Lyrics charts (powered by LyricFind) have seen a race among the recently passed, with the Eagles’ “Hotel California”  taking the #1 spot on the U.S. Chart, passing a wide array of Bowie hits that had dominated the top lyric searches since Monday.

The Eagles also saw the most immediate surge in lyric searches with 258% more searches taking place on the day of Frey’s death compared to the day before. 

Even three weeks after each respective artist’s death, lyric searches remain well above the average search for lyrics before their death.  Three weeks after Bowie died, searches remained 234% higher than the average search that occurred before his death.  STP lyrics were up 109% three weeks after Weiland died compared to before.

“Lyrics offer an intimate glimpse into emotions and stories behind the hits.  And after an artist passes away, experiencing the lyrics to their songs, according to the data, seems to be one of the more popular ways to mark their loss,” says Darryl Ballantyne, Founder and CEO of LyricFind.   

About LyricFind:

LyricFind is the world’s leader in licensed lyrics and has licensing from over 4,000 music publishers, including all the majors: Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing and Kobalt – and has also built a quality-controlled, vetted database of those lyrics available for licensing and synchronized technology. Behind the scenes, LyricFind tracks, reports, and pays royalties to those publishers on a song-by-song and territory-by-territory basis.

The world's leader in lyric licensing, LyricFind has strengthened its licensing partnership with Downtown Music Publishing, a leading music rights management company based in New York City.

LyricFind has recently added Downtown’s complete worldwide catalogue of rights, including works by world-renowned artists ranging from John Lennon and Nikki Sixx to One Direction and Sturgill Simpson. This deal enables lyrics from highly-searched, Downtown-represented songwriters to be made available to Deezer, Pandora, Amazon, and hundreds of other music platforms, apps, and websites whose lyrics are powered by LyricFind.

“We’re thrilled to expand our deal with Downtown Music Publishing,” says LyricFind founder and CEO Darryl Ballantyne. “Downtown represents a stellar array of songwriters and we are excited about the depth and quality this expansion will add to our existing partnership.”

Justin Kalifowitz, Downtown’s CEO noted that “Lyrics, on a stand-alone basis, are one of the world’s most precious art forms. The way in which they are cited,  studied, shared and honored truly knows no bounds. We are proud to partner with Lyricfind in licensing and distributing our lyrics to music fans around the world.”

About LyricFind:

LyricFind is the world’s leader in licensed lyrics and has licensing from over 4,000 music publishers, including all the majors: Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony-ATV, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing and Kobalt – and has also built a quality-controlled, vetted database of those lyrics available for licensing and synchronized technology. Behind the scenes, LyricFind tracks, reports, and pays royalties to those publishers on a song-by-song and territory-by-territory basis.

About Downtown Music Publishing:

Founded in 2007, Downtown Music Publishing is one of the world's leading rights-management firms, with offices in New York, Nashville, Los Angeles, London, and Amsterdam. The company's catalog spans over seven decades of popular music, encompassing some of the world’s most beloved songwriters and artists including The Beatles, John Lennon & Yoko Ono, The Kinks, Randy Newman, Hans Zimmer, Bruce Springsteen, Mötley Crüe, One Direction, Hardwell, Santigold and Carla Bruni.  The company also represents such renowned publishing catalogs as Cy Coleman’s Notable Music, the legendary Latin music catalog, Fania, the UK’s Kassner Music, and Germany’s Budde Music.  The company's technology platform, Songtrust, powers global royalty collection for over 80,000 individual songwriters as well as companies such as CD Baby, The Orchard and Downtown’s own catalog in over 90 countries around the world.

For Downtown Music Publishing:
Shore Fire Media, 718-522-7171
James Rainis - jrainis@shorefire.com
Mark Satlof - msatlof@shorefire.com

For LyricFind:
rock paper scissors, inc. 317-373-0921
Ryan Dawes - ryan@rockpaperscissors.biz

LyricFind, the world’s largest lyric licensing service, is proud to announce its partnership with The Recording Academy^® to license lyrics for various marketing and social media initiatives.

In licensing lyric displays to The Recording Academy, LyricFind guarantees the legal use of artists’ work while contributing royalties to songwriters. When The Recording Academy and or the GRAMMYs^® post a line or snippet from a song, LyricFind ensures that it is being done in accordance with all applicable laws, and that rights-holders receive appropriate compensation. In addition, LyricFind further supports this partnership by covering the royalty expenses for all retweets and reposts of GRAMMY-generated social media material.

Protecting the rights of artists is at the core of this partnership. “The Recording Academy and LyricFind are united supporting rightholders and being good industry citizens,” explains LyricFind CEO Darryl Ballantyne. “We’re treating these lyric excerpts the way we’d treat a full lyric display, and paying a royalty for the snippet that is equal to the royalty for full song lyrics.”“Protecting the rights of music creators is a pillar of The Recording Academy, so we’re proud to work with sites like LyricFind that properly compensate songwriters," noted Daryl Friedman, Chief Industry, Government & Member Relations Officer for The Recording Academy.  “We applaud LyricFind for setting an example in our industry, and are gratified to see our partnership will result in new royalties for our members.”

Lyrics will be featured on GRAMMY platforms leading up to and during the 58th GRAMMY Awards, airing February 15, 2015 at 8/7c on CBS.

The partnership is the latest in LyricFind’s energetic push to change the way lyrics function in the music ecosystem, from making deals that span the globe to collaborating with industry touchstone Billboard to create the first-ever lyric-driven charts. The leader in the legal lyrics space, LyricFind has licensing from over 4,000 music publishers, including all the majors: Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony-ATV, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing and Kobalt – and has also built a quality-controlled, vetted database of those lyrics available for licensing and synchronised technology. Behind the scenes, LyricFind tracks, reports, and pays royalties to those publishers on a song-by-song and territory-by-territory basis.

The leader in lyric licensing, LyricFind, has signed a deal for the dedicated lyric integration with Plex, a popular, all-in-one personal media solution across home and mobile devices.

The Plex music experience allows users to effortlessly stream songs, albums, and playlists from their entire music library to all of their devices, and enriches the playback experience with recommendations, album art, music videos, and now lyrics powered by LyricFind.

As of today, millions of Plex users will get access to synchronized lyrics across their mobile apps, including iOS, Android, and Windows, and later this year on Plex’s big screen apps. To access lyrics to songs in your music library, simply click on the lyrics icon while streaming a song, and synchronized lyrics will be integrated into your experience along with the music.

“We’re all about bringing Plex fans the most immersive music experience possible,” explains Scott Hancock, Plex VP of Marketing. “The integration of LyricFind is an added element that we think our users will appreciate and love.”

“Plex is a logical partner in our mission of getting licensed lyrics everywhere, powering music discovery, engagement and building revenue for creators and rights holders,” says Roy Hennig, Vice President of Sales at LyricFind. “The connected home and multi screen space is the perfect use case of lyrics to increase engagement and the value of music.”

LyricFind leads the market of lyric licensing and dominates the space with more than 100 clients including Amazon, Pandora, Deezer, Shazam, Microsoft, Yahoo, HTC and many more.

About Plex

Plex gives you instant access to your media collections—your home videos, photos, music, TV shows, and movies—so you can quickly find and stream what you want to any device, any time.

Platforms include Macs, PCs, smartphones, tablets, Xbox and PlayStation gaming consoles, Smart TVs, Roku, Chromecast, Apple TV, Amazon Fire, Nvidia Shield, and more. Whether it’s your movie and TV collection or your music library, Plex makes your media look beautiful by automatically adding movie posters, plot summaries, cover art, and descriptions. Plex also allows you to share it all with your friends and family. For more information, visit http://plex.tv and follow us on Twitter @plex and Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/plexapp.

About LyricFind

The leader in the legal lyrics space, LyricFind has licensing from over 4,000 music publishers, including all the majors: Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony-ATV, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing and Kobalt – and has also built a quality-controlled, vetted database of those lyrics available for licensing and synchronized technology. Behind the scenes, LyricFind tracks, reports, and pays royalties to those publishers on a song-by-song and territory-by-territory basis.

LyricFind, the leader in lyric licensing, announces the launch of two charts, U.S. LyricFind and Global LyricFind to be presented weekly on Billboard.com, the leading global destination for news, charts, trends and innovations in music.

“Searching for lyrics is easily one of the largest music discovery methods globally, with billions of annual requests made through our syndicated services alone. And this chart of lyric searches is very powerful data which is set to become one of the leading barometers of future hit records worldwide,” said Will Mills, Chief Revenue Officer, LyricFind.

“There is a huge consumer interest in lyrics, which is one of the key ways fans engage with songs,” explained Silvio Pietroluongo, Director of Charts, Billboard. “This chart highlights the fastest gaining tracks in lyric search queries, adding yet another way for Billboard to measure music discovery in today’s music landscape.”

The U.S. LyricFind and Global LyricFind charts rank the top trending lyric inquiries, through LyricFind’s syndication service.

LyricFind leads the market of lyric licensing, synchronisation and reporting and dominates the space with more than 100 licensees including Amazon, Pandora, Deezer, Shazam, Microsoft, Yahoo, SoundHound and HTC, among others.

In August 2015, Billboard.com hit 14.62 million worldwide monthly uniques, according to comScore. Billboard magazine regularly scores news-making covers with top artists including Lana del Rey, Lady Gaga and Elton John, Selena Gomez, and The Weeknd.

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About LyricFind

The leader in the legal lyrics space, LyricFind has licensing from over 4,000 music publishers, including all the majors: Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony-ATV, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing and Kobalt – and has also built a quality-controlled, vetted database of those lyrics available for licensing and synchronised technology. Behind the scenes, LyricFind tracks, reports, and pays royalties to those publishers on a song-by-song and territory-by-territory basis.

About Billboard

Billboard is the world’s most influential music brand, built on the most complete and well-respected database of charts across all music genres. The Billboard charts define success in music. From the iconic Billboard magazine to Billboard.com which is the ultimate consumer-facing destination for millions of passionate music fans, to the industry’s most elite conference series and influencer events including the Power 100 and Women in Music – the Billboard brand has unmatched authority among fans, artists and the industry alike. Billboard has a total social following numbering more than 14.6 million across platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. Billboard magazine has scored major news-generating covers recently including Jimmy Fallon, Azelia Banks, N.W.A, Britney Spears, Florence Welch and Selena Gomez.

The leader in international lyric licensing, LyricFind, and R2G, China’s leading  digital music distribution company, have just signed an exclusive strategic partnership. The exclusive deal means R2G will represent LyricFind in China for both Business Development and Publisher Relations.

“We have great traction globally and by partnering with R2G as our exclusive agent it will further accelerate our business across the fast growing Chinese music market”, explains Will Mills, LyricFind’s Chief Revenue Officer.

“R2G are the most comprehensive Chinese music metadata and lyrics provider,” explains Darryl Ballantyne, LyricFind CEO, “so this will also hugely benefit our existing partners like Pandora, Amazon, Deezer, Shazam, Microsoft, HTC and more than 100 others from an even larger, fully licensed international music catalogue.”

With over 10 years of market expertise, R2G has established by far the most extensive digital music coverage in China. As a result, LyricFind’s massive catalog of lyrics in English and several other languages, the most extensive the world, will now also appear on millions of screens and devices across China.

R2G is part of China Music Corporation, which is the largest music platform in the world in terms of active user base and is also the largest digital music aggregator and licensing platform in China. R2G’s pragmatic approach to dealing with the copyright environment has enabled many content providers to tap into the Chinese market and has catalysed the powerful trend among major Chinese music services to move out of the shadows and into legal music licensing. This partnership with lyrics is a natural part of that trend, as LyricFind is proving around the planet.

“As a first mover in the market, R2G has strived for over a decade to build a legitimate music ecosystem in China,” says Mathew Daniel, President of R2G “It was time to include lyrics in this ecosystem, and we can’t think of a better partner than LyricFind.”

The leader in the legal lyrics space, LyricFind has not only amassed licensing from over 4,000 music publishers, including all the majors: Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony-ATV, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing and Kobalt – but has also built a quality-controlled, vetted database of those lyrics available for licensing. Behind the scenes, LyricFind tracks, reports, and pays royalties to those publishers on a song-by-song and territory-by-territory basis.

R2G is the leading music distribution service provider with licensing deals across most of the major Service Providers in China, combined with rights from both local and international Content Providers. R2G is also one of the largest distributors of Chinese music to global music services like iTunes, Spotify and Amazon.

China Music Corporation (CMC) is not only the largest music platform in the world in terms of active user base with 389 million users, but is also the fastest growing with a share of 73.7% of total internet users in China. As the largest digital music aggregator and licensing platform in China, CMC controls 32% of all licensed music in China. With a multi-platform coverage over mobile, PC and IPTV, CMC’s properties include Kugou, Kuwo, R2G and Rainbow Music which are all leading players in their respective categories.

LyricFind, the world’s leader in B2B Lyric Licensing, announces Robert Singerman will be joining the company as VP International Publishing and opening LyricFind’s New York office. With existing major partners like Deezer, Amazon, Shazam, HTC and Microsoft, LyricFind is expanding rapidly worldwide, and Singerman’s appointment will further accelerate the company’s international publishing licensing expansion.

Industry veteran Singerman has represented artists as diverse as R.E.M., James Brown, Gypsy Kings, and Fela Kuti, as well as Brazil, France and Europe in music export. He brings a deep understanding of the international publishing industry, a global contact network and a proven track record of success in closing complex rightsholder negotiations.

“It's an honor and pleasure for me to be working with the LyricFind team,” says Singerman, “a dedicated and growing group, committed to raising the value of songs by working with their publishing, songwriting, and media partners of the world.”

In some countries, PROs number in the teens, and indie publishers in the thousands. “Independently published songs worldwide make up a great deal of the most essential songs in every country and culture, especially given the continuing new copyright and technological advancements worldwide,” Singerman notes. “The billions of mobile phones and cloud storage capacities have completely changed the opportunities for people to hear and to understand all songs.”

Major music services choose LyricFind because they can get lyrics and synchronized lyric rights covered in a one-stop shop, with quality assurance and best-in-class technology and expertise. This unparalleled service gives music services the widest fully licensed coverage. These services find that LyricFind enables them to use lyrics to drive music discovery, sales, listens, and advertising revenue.

“The demand for lyrics in apps, hardware, and software is skyrocketing,” explains LyricFind CEO Darryl Ballantyne. “We’re excited to have Robert as an integral part of our team, and to have a longtime music industry veteran leading the publishing front for us as we expand globally.”

LyricFind, the World’s Leader in B2B Lyric Licensing, is expanding further into Europe, and announcing Will Mills will be joining the company as Chief Revenue Officer, based in London. With existing major partners like Deezer, Amazon, HTC and Microsoft, LyricFind is now expanding rapidly worldwide and is opening an office in London to deepen this expansion into Europe and Asia Pacific.

Heading this next phase of growth is digital music veteran Will Mills. Mills joins LyricFind from Shazam where he was the most senior music executive there for a decade, most recently as VP Music & Content. During his tenure he was responsible for majority of Shazam’s deals with the global music industry, and led the teams that delivered content ingestion, editorial content, promotions and many other business development initiatives that were critical in Shazam’s massive growth and leadership.

“I’m hugely excited to be joining LyricFind at this exciting point in it’s history and building on the existing great foundations.” said Mills, “There are many welcome similarities to LyricFind as to when I joined Shazam; namely, market leadership in the B2B space, roughly the same sized team and enormous room for growth. I look forward to using my experience to help grow LyricFind with our many partners and new partners worldwide.”

“We’re very excited to have Will joining the LyricFind team.” said Darryl Ballantyne, LyricFind’s CEO. “Having worked with Will for years during his time at Shazam, we’ve always known him to be a smart and highly effective executive, and we couldn’t think of anyone better to lead our continued global expansion.”

Will has co-invented patented technology around Media/Lyric synchronization at Shazam and will be responsible for leading the team on all global business development and sales at LyricFind. Andrew Stess, LyricFind’s previous Chief Revenue Officer, will be remaining on LyricFind’s Board of Directors and also on the Business Development team on the West Coast.

“As of 2014, every significant lyric website in English is now licensed or shut down,” proclaims LyricFind CEO Darryl Ballantyne. He would know. The company, which he co-founded, has spent the last decade creating a lyric licensing infrastructure, which launched a new, multi-million dollar revenue stream for publishers and empowers websites and music apps to legally use lyrics for a variety of uses.

“There are no big offenders out there anymore,” Ballantyne explains. “The last big one was LyricsMania, and we did that deal this past year. We continue to work with the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) to help the remaining smaller and medium-sized lyric websites become legal or find a different business model.”

“Through its antipiracy program, NMPA has sent takedown notices to over 300 unlicensed lyrics sites and licensed over three dozen,” says David Israelite, the President & CEO of NMPA. “LyricFind has been instrumental in helping infringing sites obtain licenses and continue operating. It is important for music fans to be able to access lyrics and LyricFind has been a valuable partner in legalizing these sites as an alternative to shutting down completely.”

LyricFind’s business-to-business platform connects the publishers of millions of songs, with websites, hardware companies, and software applications worldwide that want to display or otherwise use lyrics to support advertising, search, or music streaming or download services.

On the publishing side, LyricFind represents all the major publishers (Universal, Warner-Chappell, and Sony/ATV) and over three thousand independent publishers worldwide. LyricFind’s exclusive deal to license all Universal lyrics in the English language worldwide makes their offer especially helpful to lyrics websites and applications. Additionally, through partners like the Harry Fox Agency, CSDEM and APRA AMCOS, LyricFind also represents lyric licenses on behalf of foreign publishers around the globe.

On the client side, LyricFind licenses and feeds lyrics to several music services including Deezer, Amazon, iHeartRadio, HTC, Shazam, SoundHound, Bing, and many more. LyricFind also licenses and feeds lyrics to lyric websites and apps like LyricsMode, MetroLyrics, LyricsMania, SongMeanings, LyricsFreak, Sing365, and hundreds of others.

In an interesting twist of events, not since sheet music’s popularity before recording technology have lyrics become such a significant source of revenue for publishers. It’s only now, thirteen years after the Napster injunction, that the infrastructure for rights management in the digital era makes it possible for developers to use lyrics in new and interesting ways legally. Lyric innovations in recent years include lyric search, lyric videos, multi-lingual song releases, and community forums for lyric annotation.

In 2013, LyricFind introduced synchronized lyric delivery, using their timestamp metadata to allow streaming apps to seed a whole new world of innovation. In the final two weeks of 2014, Deezer released their Lyrics feature using LyricFind’s time-stamped lyric offering so that listeners can sing along with their favorite or newly discovered songs. It’s too early to say what creative products will emerge in 2015 with this leading-edge development.

One thing that is for sure as we move into a new year: Lyrics will be integrated into more and more apps and websites thanks to the decade-long haul by LyricFind. And 2014 was the turning point for lyrics; the moment when there were no longer any excuses to have lyrics everywhere music shows up.