Gracenote Signs Lyric Licenses With All Five Music Publishers
New Version Of iTunes To Offer Song Lyrics?
Gracenote announced that it has signed agreements to license song lyrics from Warner/Chappell Music, the award-winning publishing arm of Warner Music Group and EMI Music Publishing, the world’s number-one music publisher, as well as leading independent publisher ABKCO Music, Inc., The Bob Dylan Music Company, Disney Music Publishing, Ice Nine Publishing, and Windswept Holdings, bringing the rights for hundreds of thousands of new song lyrics to the Gracenote Lyrics catalog. These latest agreements mean that Gracenote has completed licenses with all five major music publishers, and bring the total of participating publishers to more than 80—furthering Gracenote’s plan to bring legal, accurate song lyrics to consumers.
Major music publishers BMG Music Publishing, EMI Music Publishing, Sony/ATV Music Publishing, Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner/Chappell Music and dozens of independent music publishers have joined the Gracenote Lyrics program since its inception in July 2006. 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 expects the first publicly-available lyric service to launch in early 2007, 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.
As part of the licensing program, independent publishers and songwriters can register online for Gracenote’s publisher program and have their lyrics made available through the Gracenote service. This is a breakthrough program, especially for smaller organizations and individual artists who can now participate alongside larger publishers to make their songs available to millions of fans and be properly compensated for their use.
The Future: This announcement paves the way for Apple’s iTunes to offer complete song lyrics to consumers. Will Mr. Jobs make this announcement at MacWorld? Seems like the timing is just right…
More information on how the new Gracenote Lyric Service.
