Why We Wrote This Guide

This guide was composed to provide you with a comprehensive breakdown of the lyric licensing company, LyricFind. In sharing information about what LyricFind does and why, we hope you will feel comfortable deciding whether or not LyricFind’s services are right for you. Moreover, Exploration offers a LyricFind audit and we hope this guide demonstrates our knowledge and understanding of LyricFind and its data.

Who Is This Guide For

  • Songwriters and Lyricists who want to ensure their lyrics are properly licensed and are generating the maximum amount of royalties
  • Music Publishers whose lyric catalogs are being exploited without proper licensing

Contents


History of LyricFind

Christopher Book, Mohamed Moutadayne, and Darryl Ballentine founded LyricFind as college students in Ontario, Canada in 2004. LyricFind was formed as a legal lyrics licensor that licensed its lyric catalog to various websites. By 2012, LyricFind had licensing agreements with around 2,700 music publishers. In 2014, LyricFind signed a deal with Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG) to become UMPG’s sole third party “to administer future licenses for lyrics controlled.” LyricFind now has licenses to over 55,000 lyric catalogs and serves 200 territories in 33 different languages. Also, LyricFind features two charts on Billboard.com featuring the top trending lyric searches in the US and globally.

What is LyricFind?

LyricFind is a leading company that provides lyric licensor and data solutions. They obtain licenses to song lyrics from publishers and independent songwriters/lyricists to ensure their lyrics are utilized lawfully by a variety of platforms. LyricFind also ensures that the proper amount of royalties is generated when the lyrics are searched or utilized. The easiest way to experience one of LyricFind’s services is by simply searching for the lyrics of a song on Google. Most likely, the box of lyrics that pops up was composed by and licensed to Google by LyricFind. Prior to LyricFind, Google would produce links to a plethora of websites containing unlicensed and incorrectly transcribed lyric catalogs. Now, LyricFind works with platforms such as Amazon, Google, YouTube, Deezer, Pandora, and iHeartRadio to provide current, accurate, fully licensed lyrics that generate royalty payments. Along with lyric searching, LyricFind provides a variety of other services that enhance the visibility of lyrics on the internet and ensure they are shared properly.

LyricFind’s Services

LyricFind breaks down its services into six categories:

LyricDisplay

  • Lyrics are one of the top searched terms on the internet, and how they are displayed is important. LyricFind works with digital streaming platforms such as Deezer and Plex to display lyrics statically (entire song as a digital block of text), line-by-line (lyrics displayed line by line in time with the music), and word-by-word (Lyrics synchronized word-by-word for a sing-along experience).

LyricSearch

  • LyricFind is partnered with Google to provide properly licensed and transcribed lyrics at your fingertips. Whenever you search the lyrics to a song that’s in LyricFind’s extensive catalog, Google provides you with a text box containing your desired lyrics. Also, LyricFind ensures every view of lyrics in Google generates royalty payments to the owner of the lyrics.

Translations

  • LyricFind provides in-house lyric translation so that your lyrics are accessible globally. LyricFind offers in-house translation for English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Japanese lyrics.

LyricIQ

  • According to LyricFind, “LyricIQ is a set of innovative data analysis and filtering tools, designed to dive deeper into the lyrical content of songs and give you more control over your product offering.” LyricIQ includes Emotion & Sentiment Analysis, Content Filters and Subject Matter Analysis.

    • Emotion & Sentiment Analysis by LyricFind categorizes and analyzes songs based on the emotional content of lyrics. This type of lyric analysis allows for improved song recommendations, refined playlisting, and automation based on specific sentiment and emotion categorization. This service is unique because it focuses solely on the lyrical content of songs rather than the song as a whole.
    • Content Filters by LyricFind sort and rank lyrics based on 31 categories pertaining to profanity, sex, violence, drugs, religion, politics and more. LyricIQ lets clients control their desired music experience and define their own levels and rankings based on their platform’s specific content needs and audience preferences.
    • Subject Matter Analysis by LyricFind can determine and categorize lyrics based on subject matter, as well as topics like brand names, celebrities, locations, and much more. According to LyricFind, Subject Matter Analysis is beneficial for playlisting, sync licensing, advertising, and voice searches.

Administration

  • LyricFind offers a reporting system that tracks lyric uses and pays songwriters and rights holders on a song-by-song and territory-by-territory basis. LyricFind delivers quarterly royalty reports giving you insight into your publishing catalog. The reports record all publisher and songwriter data and accreditation, copyright ownership data, split information, and territorial restrictions.

LyricMerch

  • LyricMerch is an in-house merchandising branch by LyricFind. LyricMerch provides fans with custom lyric-based apparel, home goods and lifestyle products. LyricMerch ensures that products that feature lyrics generate profits for songwriters and rights holders. LyricMerch is also partnered with several merchandise affiliates.

Registration

LyricFind suggests registering through one of their partner organizations. For US-based publishers and songwriters, LyricFind is partnered with the Harry Fox Agency. Registering through the HFA expedites the registration process and allows the HFA to share necessary information, data, and lyrics with LyricFind. If you are not a US-based publisher or songwriter, LyricFind is partnered with agencies in several other territories. You can find a list of partner agencies here.

If you are not associated with a partner agency, you can register directly with LyricFind here. After creating an account on LyricFind, you will gain access to your LyricFind Dashboard where you can manually submit ownership information, manage your publishers, and upload lyrics.

What Does LyricFind Do For You?

Overall, LyricFind works to ensure publishers and songwriters earn the royalties owed to them for use of their lyrics. Along with boosting royalty income, LyricFind exposes your lyrics to over 200 territories and ensures writers and publishing companies are properly credited for each song by displaying the lyrics with their accompanying metadata. LyricFind’s administration services provide detailed lyric royalty reports. LyricFind also touts flexible lyric control functions allowing songwriters and publishers to retain full control of their lyrics with the ability to lock, edit or block them at any time.

Exploration provides a LyricFind audit service and can help you navigate, understand, and utilize the data their services provide. Learn more about Exploration Audits here.

Notable Partners

LyricFind is partnered with several music publishing companies and lyrics platforms. Here is a list of publishers and platforms LyricFind is partnered with:

Music Publishers/Agencies:

Music Platforms

Sources


Author: Will Donohue

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