Feature: Online Lyric Licensing – Part One

There’s no denying artists’ rights changed as soon as we entered the digital age, but while most view online music piracy as the illegal uploading and downloading of MP3 files, websites which publish song lyrics without licenses are huge offenders both overseas and locally.

Sites which were first created as a service to music fans are bringing in huge advertising revenue on the back of high traffic numbers. According to research by the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA), the US equivalent of the Australasian Music Publishers Association (AMPAL), there are more than five million Google searches every day for lyrics, with an astonishing 50% of all lyric page impressions recorded on unlicensed sites in 2013.

Both AMPAL and collection society APRA AMCOS are aware of these figures and have made serious inroads to ensure songwriters/ lyricists receive royalties where they are owed. In 2012, AMPAL General Manager Jeremy Fabinyi met with representatives of Toronto- based LyricFind. His first meeting with the company at Midem was complicated by the fact most of the multi-national publishers already had in place global deals with the service. In fact, LyricFind currently has licensing deals with 3,000 plus music publishers, including all four majors worldwide. LyricFind also provides lyrics and licensing services to companies like Amazon, HTC, MTV, Shazam, iHeartRadio and Pandora. Because of this, it was at first difficult to determine what the scope of an Australian deal would be. However, authors/lyricists without current publishing deals in place can now claim royalties on works because of the deal struck between LyricFind and APRA AMCOS.

“In the end the deal is intended to cover those works of AMCOS members who are not party to global deals and who have opted into the deal for lyric viewing in Australia,” says Fabinyi. “AMCOS members also have the option to opt in to license LyricFind for specific works for global viewing.”

LyricFind became the service provider for Australia and New Zealand on April 1 this year with APRA AMCOS granting a non- exclusive license to LyricFind on behalf of lyric websites and all AMCOS members, regardless of whether they are published or not. The deal marks the first time LyricFind has inked a blanket agreement with a society and allows it to roll out its entire catalogue of services within Australia and New Zealand, giving local sites more content than anywhere else in the world.

“The blanket agreement with APRA AMCOS allows us to use all works within the ANZ territory, regardless of language, place of origin, publisher, etc.,” says LyricFind co-Founder Darryl Ballantyne. “APRA AMCOS will collect the licensing revenue from us for all works, anddistribute it to the appropriate publishers.” Matthew Fackrell, Director of Business Change at AMCOS saidbefore April 1, only major publisher’s content in Australia and New Zealand were covered by LyricFind’s international deals and now both territories’ unrepresented works – the deals that didn’t extend to those territories with the native publishers – are covered.

“You’ll now see a lot of sites, it might not be blatantly obvious, but some pages you’ll see it’ll say ‘powered by LyricFind’,” Fackrell says. “LyricFind are great partners in that they are proactive and want tolegitimise the sector,” he continues. “They’re very active, especially in the United States, taking action with the National Music Publishers Association to ensure that it’s a level playing field.”

The agreement between LyricFind and APRA AMCOS is vastly different to the current lyric licensing deal in the US. LyricFind’s deal with US music rights licensing organisation Harry Fox Agency is on an opt-in basis, where publishers choose to participate individually.

“With APRA AMCOS, we’ve done a blanket deal that encompasses all publishers and works used in Australia and New Zealand,” says Ballantyne, “which allows us to have a much more complete service.”

The license here also applies to music streaming platforms like Pandora, which has been integrating licensed lyrics into its service since 2009. In March 2009 Pandora launched the first iteration of its lyric integration through global media database Gracenote. In 2013, LyricFind acquired Gracenote’s lyrics business.

LyricFind tracks every single lyric display in each territory, and divides that revenue up based on the number of times each lyric was viewed. Publishers are then paid according to their ownership share of each song.

APRA AMCOS’ deal with LyricFind is non-exclusive and allows its board to speak with other potential partners about similar deals in the future. Furthermore, unlike counterparts in the US, APRA AMCOS currently has no right to instigate lawsuits on infringing sites. In 2012, the NMPA won a $6.6 million judgment against LiveUniverse, Inc. The co-founder of the site, Brad Greenspan, one of the co-founders of MySpace, was forced to pay US$12,500 for each of the 528 songs that were found to be willfully infringed and hand over the rights to his sites lyricsdownload.com, completealbumlyrics.com and lyricsandsongs. com to a group of music publishers including Peermusic, Bug Music and Warner Chappell Music. The NMPA has since sued and reached settlements with many other sites, leading to most sites now being licensed through LyricFind.

Locally there is a lot of traction to find proactive ways to license sites, rather than adopt litigious methods. As an adjunct to Universal Music Publishing Group’s direct global deal with LyricFind, it has joined with APRA AMCOS to allow LyricFind to be the non-exclusive third party licensor of UMPG’s lyrics.

:: Feature: Online Lyric Licensing – Part Two

TMN will publish the final part of this article, tomorrow.This article is taken from the November issue of the Australian Music Business Review.If you'd like a hardcopy of themagazine pleasecontact us.