We know you probably don’t buy CDs anymore, and that you’re not reading the lyrics from the CD case insert. That doesn’t mean you don’t feel the need to look up the lyrics from time to time, right? Especially those fast-paced rap songs, they can be really tricky to figure out by just listening. But when you go online to do that, have you ever thought about whether these lyrics sites have the right to publish those lyrics and make money off of the ads on the site? Probably not.
On this episode of Musonomics we talk about lyrics licensing and how the changes in the music industry are affecting the hardworking people who wrote those lyrics – the songwriters.
You’ll hear from Darryl Ballantyne, CEO and founder of LyricFind. It’s a company that up to date has licenses with over 4,000 music publishers, to try and make sure that the songwriters and right holders are compensated for their work when the lyrics end up online. How did he come up with the idea to start licensing lyrics and how did the music publishers react?
In the end, the people losing out on unlicensed lyrics being published online are the songwriters, so we also talk to Phil Galdston, whose songs have sold 70 million copies worldwide. What’s his take on the songwriters’ struggle to be able to sustain themselves by just writing songs in the digital era? And if you want to hear a longer version of the interview with Phil Galdston, you can find it here.
As always, you can listen to the new episode on iTunes, or stream it on Soundcloud or YouTube.