Italy-born lyrics provider Musixmatch is expanding into music distribution with a new service called Musixmatch Pro.
Established in January 2010, over 500,000 artists now manage their lyrics directly through Musixmatch, including the likes of Drake, Billie Eilish, The Rolling Stones, Dua Lipa, Jay-Z, Taylor Swift and others.
The platform is read by over 70 million unique users each month.
Launching in Q4 2021, Musixmatch says that Musixmatch Pro is aimed at providing a self-service platform “for all music creators and professionals” where they can “verify music credits, claim and administrate copyrights, distribute music, and get paid”.
Musixmatch Pro will come in the form of a new standalone web and mobile platform, which can be used by songwriters, musicians and their representatives, such as publishers, labels, and managers.
Musixmatch says that the new service will act as a “one-stop-shop” for distribution and will feature tools to verify and distribute music, lyrics, visual assets and related metadata.
Musixmatch explains that “every music professional will be able to manage their personal online profile and claim credits for every song they have ever collaborated on”.
The company says that credits will show up on Musixmatch websites and applications and will also be made available through an API to all Musixmatch partners including, amongst others, Apple Music, Tidal, Amazon Music and Spotify, which launched real-time lyrics in 26 markets last summer.
In addition to the distribution and credit management features, Musixmatch’s new service will give artists access to a personal Wallet, which will display stats and royalty statements.
Musixmatch stated: “We want to re-match the recording and publishing worlds through a single entry point.
“In standard music business agreements, musicians earn royalties from their recordings, while songwriters earn through their copyrights.
“However, given the complexities of the global digital licensing landscape, in particular for smaller songwriters, it has become too onerous and expensive to track and trace royalties globally. As a result, the number of unpaid tracks keeps increasing.
“Let’s face it: a lot of indie artists today are both songwriters and performers, so why do they have to have multiple places to claim their royalties? We think that there should be an easy solution for all of it.”
Musixmatch, which is run by founder and CEO, Max Ciociola, has offices in Bologna (HQ), San Francisco, and London.
To date, Musixmatch has raised $19.3 million, according to Crunchbase, with its latest investment round taking place last year for $2.5 million. That round was led by Piton Capital.
In 2019, Musixmatch launched a partnership with Instagram that allows consumers to add song lyrics to their Instagram stories.Music Business Worldwide