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Gracenote goes legit with lyric business
Gracenote has said in a statement that they have now acquired legal licenses to distribute lyrics. This comes after the music publishers announced their plans to sue websites and services which provided lyrics illegally on the internet.
Ross Blanchard, Gracenote’s vice president of business development spoke about this new initiative: “When we first approached the publishers with this, they were excited. They thought lyrics had been an untapped resource for them and there’s quite a bit of lyrics being taken for free on the Web.
The company has obtained the rights to the lyrics of more than 1 million songs. This includes the North American catalogs of BMG Music Publishing, Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV Music Publishing, peermusic and others.
Now, Gracenote plans to talk to their partners to offer this service officially through their channels. The company works with Yahoo! and Apple (Apple iTunes) and this can bring a lot of value added features to the customers of these digital music services.
Nicholas Firth, chairman and chief executive officer of BMG Music Publishing added his views on this new development: “This license creates a new revenue stream which will guarantee that songwriters are paid for their work.”
Ralph Peer II, Firth’s counterpart at peermusic said: “I think we’ll see a reasonable increase, as much as a 5 percent increase, in industry music publishing revenues five years out from where we are right now. Clearly, there are copyright issues involving these unlicensed sites, which are making good income through advertising and other sources, while the composers are not getting their due.”