LyricFind’s Robert Singerman recently took part in an interview with The 49th Street covering history of LyricFind, how the money flows for music lyrics, what Africa’s music industry is missing, and why he has spent over two decades trying to give music subtitles.
How would you describe LyricFind, and how does the business model actually work from platform to songwriter?
Kyellu Tsamdu, Hodovai Ekpe-Iko, The 49th Street
LyricFind created the online lyrics market. The founders actually started it during their studies at the University of Waterloo in Canada. One of them was looking for lyrics online, could not find them, and they built a lyrics website. They did not even realise what they were doing was not legal until companies approached them to sublicense, and they started looking into the laws. That is actually how it started.
The real turning point came when Microsoft called and said, “If you can license this, we will use your lyrics.” So Darryl Ballantyne, the CEO, called Ted Cohen at EMI. Ted said he could help get the major publishers on board, and that is how the business model was born. Darryl went on to build LyricFind with his co-founder Mohamed Moutadayne instead of going back to EMI to work for Ted.
The model is simple: we license lyrics from music publishers, and then we provide those licences to platforms, DSPs, search engines, car manufacturers, phone companies, health care facilities, whoever wants to display lyrics legally. Lyrics are traditionally 50% of the value of a song. The music is the other 50%. So over the last 21 years, as the music business has shifted from physical to digital, we have built the infrastructure that ensures that value gets captured and paid out.