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Gracenote and Leading Music Publishers Sign Groundbreaking Lyrics Licensing Deals

Posted on: Monday, 17 July 2006, 09:00 CDT

Gracenote announced it has signed agreements licensing lyrics rights from many of the world's leading music publishers, taking a giant step in bringing the most extensive set of legal, accurate song lyrics to consumers. Through the agreements, Gracenote, a leader in global digital entertainment technology, has obtained rights to all the available lyrics from the North American music catalogs of BMG Music Publishing, Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV Music Publishing, Peermusic, Famous Music, and dozens of others. Collectively, these music publishers own rights to the lyrics of more than one million compositions. These licenses pave the way for the first legal mass commercial use of lyrics, which is an important step in enhancing the consumer digital music experience, while protecting the rights of songwriters and music publishers.

Gracenote will launch a lyrics service later this year enabling digital music retailers, mobile providers, search engines, music portals, and consumer electronics manufacturers to offer legal access to an accurate and comprehensive lyrics catalog. The service will initially be available in North America.

"Consumer demand for lyrics is enormous. Lyrics are consistently in the top ten most-searched categories on the Web," said Craig Palmer, CEO of Gracenote. "Until now there has been no legal, accurate and complete service to provide this important content. Gracenote has been working with the music publishing industry for over two years to find the best way to make this a reality, and with these licensing agreements in place, we'll be able to offer the most comprehensive set of legal, original lyrics to millions of consumers through a wide variety of products and services."

"Licensing our catalog of lyrics through Gracenote gives consumers new access to accurate, legal and original content," said Nicholas Firth, chairman and CEO of BMG Music Publishing. "Our agreement with Gracenote ensures that music lovers will have the most compelling and complete music experience. This license creates a new revenue stream which will guarantee songwriters are paid for their work."

Currently, consumers' access to song lyrics is largely through unauthorized and unlicensed sources. The accuracy and coverage of these sources is highly questionable, since they have no access to the original lyrics to compare the performance of a song to its score.

"The craft of lyric writing has remained underappreciated for too many years. We needed a partner sympathetic to the art with robust technical skills, musical know-how and industry experience to help bring authorized lyrics to the public, and we have been privileged to work closely with Gracenote," said Ralph Peer II, chairman and CEO of peermusic. "Consumers will now have new opportunities to explore and appreciate the words and sentiments of the songs they love. This launch will significantly broaden the market for licensed music."

"There is no doubting the huge popularity of searching for lyrics online. We are pleased to partner with Gracenote in what will provide consumers a legal alternative for finding the lyrics they want, thereby enabling our songwriters and artists to (finally) get paid for this usage of their copyrights," David Renzer, chairman & CEO, Universal Music Publishing Group said.

"We are always looking for new and innovative ways to promote our artists and their work," said David Hockman, chairman and CEO of Sony/ATV Music Publishing. "Gracenote is providing an important and innovative venue to further showcase the talent of our writers, and we are pleased to be working with them."

As part of the licensing program independent publishers and songwriters will also be able to "opt in" via a website and have their Lyrics made available through Gracenote service. This is a breakthrough in enabling smaller organizations or even individual artists to have their important content made available to millions of fans and to be properly compensated for its use. Music Publishers can go to www.gracenote.com/lyrics for more information and enroll in the program.

About Gracenote

Gracenote is a leader in global digital entertainment technology. Formerly known as CDDB, Gracenote provides businesses with critical embedded software and metadata that enable consumers to better manage, enjoy and discover digital media. Headquartered in Emeryville, California, Gracenote also has offices in New York, Tokyo, Berlin and Seoul. Gracenote's solutions are embedded in leading media players such as Apple iTunes, Yahoo Music Engine, RealNetworks Rhapsody, Napster and AOL Winamp, as well as software applications for Creative and iRiver portable devices. Gracenote's technology powers leading home and automobile consumer electronics brands such as Alpine, Denon and Marantz, Kenwood, Panasonic, Philips, Pioneer, Samsung, Sony and Yamaha, as well as international mobile music applications for KDDI (Japan), KTF (Korea), Musiwave (Portugal), Oi (Brazil) and Sony-Ericsson. For more information about Gracenote, please refer to www.gracenote.com/corporate/.

Source: Business Wire

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