The Untapped Revenue in Lyrics and Music Videos with Darryl Ballantyne

Lyrics are more than words on a screen. They’re a source of revenue, a tool for music discovery, and a way for artists to build deeper connections with fans around the world.

In this episode of Music Tectonics, Dmitri Vietze sits down with Darryl Ballantyne, CEO and co-founder of LyricFind, to explore how artists and labels can unlock the untapped revenue in lyrics and music videos. Darryl shares how lyrics drive listening engagement, help fans discover music, and open doors to international audiences through translations. He also explains why official lyric videos matter, how they can generate YouTube revenue, and what artists stand to lose when unofficial videos capture the views.

Plus, Darryl announces Artist Unlimited, a new subscription tier within LyricFind’s Verified Artist Platform that gives artists access to unlimited video creation through Rotor Videos. From lyric videos and music videos to Spotify Canvas and Apple Music motion art, the offering makes it easier and more affordable for artists to create the visual assets they need across their releases and back catalogs.

Whether you’re an independent artist, songwriter, or label professional, this conversation explores how to make lyrics work harder for your music and how overlooked assets can become meaningful revenue opportunities.

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Episode Transcript

Machine transcribed

[00:00:00] Dmitri: Darryl Ballantyne is one of my oldest friends in the music tech space. He's been at every Music Tectonics conference from the beginning. We've collaborated on countless projects, and he's a perfect example of someone who loves music and works so hard to be fair with all the stakeholders, bringing value to artists, labels, publishers, and always loves helping, tech companies and startups bring innovation to the music space.

He's also the CEO and co-founder of LyricFind, and this year at the Music Tectonics conference, he was there, which is just wrapping today as we publish this episode. He brought us the latest evolutions of LyricFind, once again showing how passionate he's dedicated to making lyrics not only a revenue stream in its own right, but a tool for marketing, for music discovery, for increased engagement, the entire music funnel.

Great to have you back on the podcast, Darryl.

[00:00:50] Darryl: Oh, thanks for having me, Dmitri. Always such an amazing pleasure to be not just on the podcast, but also, in Santa Monica on the beach at Tectonics, which you know is my favorite events and the favorite places to hang out and see everybody. it's always such an amazing time, and very good for business too.

[00:01:11] Dmitri: Oh, that's good.

[00:01:11] Darryl: So thank you for everything that you and the rest of your team do to, to make that happen every year.

[00:01:17] Dmitri: Thank you. Thank you. And you guys have been egging us on, supporting us the whole way. We couldn't do it without LyricFind and our other partners and supporters and attendees, and I mean, the reason you're such a good fit for this is because of what I said in the intro about you're treating lyrics as this whole, like, world that used to just be...

I remember, like, growing up, I was looking at, you know, cassettes or albums or CDs, liner notes, and, like, I would read the lyrics. I would read everything in those, those notebooks, and we kind of, like, lost a lot of that, and you just brought it back into the digital experience. For a lot of artists, lyrics now, because of that, they kind of feel like a lower priority once the song is recorded because they're, where are they?

They're invisible. But why should they think of lyrics as a revenue asset in their own right? And where does that money actually come from today, Darryl?

[00:02:01] Darryl: Well, it's a great question. Well, like really now it comes from so many different sources, and it used to be when we started this that lyrics were just, on lyric websites and they were ad-supported and they weren't paying for any licensing, rights at all.

So none of that money was flowing back to the songwriters, the publishers, and other rights holders. Now it's not just the lyric websites, and DSPs obviously with all the integrations into streaming, but we're also licensing lyrics into automotive implementations and into hardware devices, like speakers with screens attached that have lyrics on there.

We're using lyrics for search, discovery, content filtration, and playlisting. we're licensing, any type of, device that you can, can think of, uh, and implementations into video, platforms, into, you know, kid-friendly, experiences, into sync licensing platforms, into really anywhere where music is consumed now, lyrics are also a part of that experience and it's now licensed, paid for, and, flowing back to the rights holders and songwriters.

[00:03:18] Dmitri: So you're saying like every one of those... I mean, you did the whole podcast in one little sentence there, but but in all those places where lyrics are showing up, you're saying money is flowing back to the songwriter or the publisher every time that happens?

[00:03:31] Darryl: Yeah. We track every display and use of the lyrics, across all of our clients on a territory by territory basis and broken down between the services with, different rates that are paid or whether it's a static display, a line-by-line display, a word-by-word display, a translation display, for example.

All of those things are tracked, and that revenue is divided up and shared with the rights owners based on how much it was used, where it was used, how it was used, to make sure that everything is accurately paid to the people who deserve it and who made that song and those lyrics.

[00:04:12] Dmitri: It's so interesting cause now you've sort of said this is the distribution, this is where all this stuff exists, this is the money that flows back.

But as we reconnect all the fragmentation when lyrics got lost from digital for a while, you've seen what happens when they're available alongside the track. What does the data show about things like listening time, whether it's per song or across a whole session, and why do you think lyrics have that effect?

[00:04:36] Darryl: Yeah. we've done studies over the years to measure what is the impact of having lyrics on a streaming service, for example. And the data shows that people listen longer when lyrics are available, not just to the service as a whole, but to individual songs as well, anywhere from 10% to 20% longer in both the length of their listening session and the length of time that they listen to individual songs.

So, if you think about the impact that that can have for an artist getting their royalties out of a DSP, when does a stream count for royalty purposes? It's when it passes 30 seconds, generally. So, if you can increase the average amount of time that somebody is listening to your song, you're going to have more of your streams cross that 30-second mark.

You're going to get a bigger share of that royalty pie, because of that implementation. And the reason why it does that is because it's a sticky feature. It's something where people are then engaging not just with the service, but with the music itself, uh, as a whole, and following along. So you're much more likely to keep going and keep listening to it when you have the lyrics in front of you, when they're synchronized, they're showing up, and you're able to follow along, you're able to understand what's there.

 and similar with translations, for example, Which takes it to a whole other level for music that is in a language that you don't understand. Now you can with those translations. So the, the stickiness and, and session time and listening for that, we haven't officially done a study on that, but, uh, you know, the anecdotal evidence is that it's astronomically higher, and creates much, much more engagement.

So as a songwriter and a publisher, not only are you getting paid for the lyric display in that case, but you're going to get paid for more streams, uh, and have longer engagement and more money on the base streaming royalties as well by having your lyrics available.

[00:06:39] Dmitri: That's really cool. You know, if you, if you even go higher up in sort of the discoverability side, I think about, like, how many times have I, been like, "Wait, what's that song?"

And I, like, You type in, like, a half-remembered line into a search bar. And- ... and so there's, like, this top-of-funnel, like, discoverability piece too. I mean, you were just talking about, like, engagement once you're, you've found it on a streaming service or it's found you or whatever, and your eyeballs are there and you're listening and engaged a little bit longer.

But how do lyrics drive search and discovery, and what does an artist lose when their lyrics are, are missing or wrong?

[00:07:10] Darryl: Yeah, absolutely. Uh, search is a massive part of the discoverability, that lyrics are used for. So as you say, we've all had those instances where there's a song that we can hear, but we...

It's in our head and we don't know, uh, what it is, and we wanna find it. So the way to do that, what do we remember? We don't remember the artist, we don't remember the song name, but we remember the lyrics. We remember how a piece of that song goes. So having your lyrics in our database then makes them discoverable through search, so people can put in a line from a song, whether it's into Google or other search engines or into a DSP and find that music and play it.

Not only that, it means that the data is available for things like sync licensing platforms, where we license content, for use in there, for people to find the right song for whether it's a commercial or a TV show or movie placement or anything like that. The lyrics data is used not only to find, songs that are the right fit from a content and subject matter basis, but also to review the song for appropriateness of-

 you might have a song that's on the right topic, but if it's absolutely profane and you're putting it in a kids show, then it's not gonna be the right fit. but the lyrics content is used for those types of services to find those and then engage in the sync licensing, which as everybody knows, can be a massive boon, of revenue for artists, by getting the right placement.

So having your lyrics in LyricFind and discoverable through search and other platforms is incredibly important beyond just the lyric royalties themselves as well.

[00:09:00] Dmitri: I wanna get into how this actually works for, for artists and labels before we finish, but I, I'm having so much fun just thinking about all the ways in lyrics get used for all these pieces of discoverability and monetization and engagement and so forth.

And there's something you mentioned earlier that I wanna ask you more about, which is kind of like the global topic, because I think lyrics and what you guys can do with that is so fascinating for what we're seeing, where a lot of the growth area is, which is across the world. How are translated lyrics changing the way artists build fan bases in other countries?

Are there examples or even numbers that show translation turns into real international growth?

[00:09:36] Darryl: Yeah. Translations have really, really taken off over the last few years, which our, our good friend and our SVP of International Publishing, Robert Singerman, has made his mission for as long as I've known him, which is a long time now, to make sure that translations are available, and which, which we do have now.

So, with the global nature of music and music services, now music is traveling a lot more than it used to. So people are able to listen to, international music incredibly easily now than it was when we were kids growing up, we had no exposure to any of that music. Now it's just all available.

And as a result, you have these crossover hits that are, international songs that, you know, I have no clue what they're saying, uh, and what the song is about until I have the lyric translations. So it's become a much, much more important part of that international push for not just non-English artists, but for English artists as well to be able to reach the rest of the world.

There are more people out in the world who don't speak your language than do, regardless of what language, you speak, and your song is in. So being able to reach the rest of them and have them understand and connect to this, uh, the music builds much deeper fan engagement, builds fan bases around the world because then now they know what your music is about and what you're, trying to say.

So you end up with really interesting scenarios. One of my favorite, examples of this is, a band called Mother Mother that we did lyric videos for, and we did translation videos as well. And with their albums, we were just putting out translation videos in a number of different languages so that they were there and so that the label could have localized content for those regions.

And all of a sudden out of nowhere, one of their songs blew up, uh, as part of a meme on German TikTok and That was just serendipitous random chance.

[00:11:55] Dmitri: So cool.

[00:11:56] Darryl: That German translation video already existed. It was there on YouTube, and all of a sudden, that German translation video of that song did more views than all the rest of the tracks and videos on that album combined.

[00:12:11] Dmitri: Wow. '

[00:12:11] Darryl: Cause it was there. It was ready for that moment. so they had a huge ROI, on having that video available, and it was only there because now we can easily make translations and translation videos and to be prepared for something like that.

[00:12:31] Dmitri: Wow. The whole idea about lyric videos and YouTube and its role in all this, especially in the global side, but, but also just like you said, it was there already, is something I wanna talk about.

But we have to take a, quick break for an announcement. When we come back, let's talk about the challenge with YouTube and, and where the opportunity lies. We'll be right back

All right, we're back, and I'm just fascinated with all the angles we've covered around lyrics. We started to talk a little bit about video with the "Mother Mother" German translation video ending up doing better than any other of the songs on their album. And you said something really interesting, which was, "It's a good thing the video was already there," because fans and third-party channels, sometimes they upload lyric videos before the artist ever does, or maybe the artist or the label hasn't even thought about it, and those are the versions that can pile up all the views.

What's at stake when someone else owns the most-watched version of your song, and why does it matter that lyric video is the official one?

[00:14:07] Darryl: Yeah. it's a really simple one-word answer: money. Money is at stake, right? Which is what everybody ultimately wants, in one form or another. But the big thing there, and, and we try to stress this so much to, artists and labels that we work with, is to make sure that you are the first.

Because if somebody else puts out a lyric video for your song, not only do you lose the creative control over what does that look like Not only do you lose the additional benefits of subscribers and activity on your channel and being able to have them watch other videos of yours, but most importantly, you lose money from it because monetization on a UGC video, is so much lower than on official videos.

Official videos-

[00:14:57] Dmitri: Mm

[00:14:57] Darryl: ... are monetized anywhere from five to 10 times the-

[00:15:01] Dmitri: Whoa

[00:15:01] Darryl: ... the ad CPM of UGC. So if you have a million views on a UGC video or a million views on your own video, you're going to make so much more money doing it yourself, and you retain that creative control, and you, you get those knock-on benefits of building your, channel.

So we've stressed over and over and over to artists and labels that they should be getting those videos out immediately. Get them out right when the album, drops so that you are the first one in the algorithm. You're the one that people find. It almost disincentivizes fans from making a UGC version.

If you've already got a great version there, they're not going to bother. So all of the traffic and, of course, all of the money flows to you, the artist, the label, and you get those benefits, not, a random UGC, channel. And you control the quality as well, which is super important.

[00:16:05] Dmitri: You know, I think we're at the point in this conversation where we better talk a little bit about how LyricFind taps into everything we've just been discussing, because I think everyone's probably totally, if they don't know LyricFind or even your video-making wing, the Rotor Videos, platform, they're probably like, "Why is this dude so into lyrics?

Why does he know so much about artists and labels and publishers and how they can use lyrics?" But then now we're talking about video. Can you just explain what do artists and labels have to gain by engaging with LyricFind? Because our first five interviews we probably did over the last decade or so, or maybe more, were really about LyricFind helping to monetize those displays of lyrics and working with publishers to do all those deals.

But now you're talking about, first of all, you're talking about the master side, the recording, not just the written side. But you're also talking about, like, the consumer fan-facing side of things So what is the way that artists work with LyricFind, and what is Rotor Video?

[00:16:59] Darryl: Yeah. So we've built now, a platform that we call our Verified Artist platform that works for both artists and labels to come and sign up and manage their content on LyricFind. So We're still creating thousands, millions of lyrics internally ourselves. But with the vast amount of releases that are coming out every day, it's impossible for us to keep up with that and make sure that everything is there.

So we're giving artists and labels the opportunity to provide us with that content to make sure that they capture all of those benefits that we've been talking about by having their lyrics in the LyricFind database so that their content goes out not just, to DSPs, but to automotive implementations, to sync platforms, to social media.

We power TikTok, for example, so making sure that, lyrics are available to build that fan experience there. So an artist can come and sign up to our verified artist platform, get verified where they just go through a process so that we know that they are who they say that they are, and then they can add their lyrics, they can synchronize their lyrics, they can translate those lyrics to make translations available.

 they can use all of our tools, our AI tools, to automatically translate and automatically synchronize. labels can come and manage their whole roster of artists, so we can give them sort of a parent account basically that manages multiple artists. And really importantly on all of this, they do it all for free.

Uh- Wow. We do not charge for access to our, platform. We don't charge artists, we don't charge labels, we don't charge to use our AI tools. That is all free to use so that every artist can make sure that they are benefiting from having their, their lyrics content available. And, we don't believe that that's something that artists should have to pay for.

Frankly, we're grateful that they come and help us with that task of growing the business. It gets monetized by licensing, and we don't want artists to have to do, anything involving their, their wallet when it comes to getting their lyrics distributed.

[00:19:15] Dmitri: Wow. So they don't have to pay to get their lyrics distributed.

You give them tools like translation, give them some management tools so they can see where they are with their different lyrics and so forth, and then you help them monetize lyrics as a separate revenue stream from everything else they've done.

[00:19:29] Darryl: Exactly. Like If they also own the, publishing rights, then they can sign up with us for that to be paid the royalties for the use and license us to make those lyrics available.

 they can use all of our tools to make that, the content process easier. We have a great, AI-assisted tool that will automatically transcribe and synchronize lyrics, and they just do a quick review of it.

[00:19:50] Dmitri: Oh, that's cool.

[00:19:51] Darryl: so it's a really quick process, and efficient. and yeah, it's all free, and then we pay them if they own the publishing rights, for the use of their content.

[00:20:01] Dmitri: that's great. So they get paid to use it, is what you're saying.

[00:20:03] Darryl: Yeah. Yeah. But they're not paying us, we're paying them. And to me-

[00:20:07] Dmitri: Yeah

[00:20:07] Darryl: ... that's, that's how it should be. We as, tech companies and as providers of this and platforms, we should be paying the artist. The artist should not be paying us.

[00:20:16] Dmitri: So you also brought Rotor Videos into the fold of your company now. So, you kinda like flipped it at that point to be able to say, "Hey, we can actually help you create visual content as recording artists or as record labels as well." And so now, explain Rotor, like you can make a lyric video on Rotor now?

[00:20:36] Darryl: Yeah. So we acquired Rotor almost three years ago now.

[00:20:41] Dmitri: Wow

[00:20:41] Darryl: ... feels like it was only, only yesterday. but yeah, it was almost three years ago. And, uh, it's a self-serve platform for artists to be able to make, not just lyric videos, but also music videos, artwork videos, Spotify Canvas videos, and Apple Music album motion art, as well.

So you can make all of the assets that you need for DSPs and social media through Rotor. And it, also has a lot of those tools integrated, stock footage, libraries, both licensed stock footage and stuff that the Rotor team has shot, on our side internally as well, all available to use. You can put a video together, for free.

There's only a fee if you want to render the final video, so you can do the whole thing, and if you don't like it, you don't have to, pay a single, cent. So that platform is also integrated into our Verified Artist platform. and that allows people to use the lyrics, obviously, that they have, transcribed and are being distributed through us.

They can easily put those into a lyric video and generate that. those videos are all created super easily. You don't need any knowledge of video editing. and you can have end-to-end, video done in just a couple of minutes. Uh, it's very, very easy to use. So we've built that into Verified Artist.

We also embed it into other platforms as well. and you can create all the video content that you need. And we've actually just announced today, so now we can officially talk about it on the "Music Tectonics" podcast, that we've launched a program called Artist Unlimited that is a new, subscription tier that is unlimited video creation.

We have spent a lot of those last three years optimizing the system and making the platform much more efficient, so we can now offer a very, very cost-effective, subscription all you can eat service for anywhere from $10 to $20 a month, and an artist can make as many videos as they want, for no additional, cost.

And when they sign up through the Verified Artist Program, that cost is actually cut in half. So, when you think about an album, if you're releasing a 12-song album and you want to make a lyric video, a music video, and a Spotify Canvas video for each track, and a, Apple Motion Art to complete your, DSP services, and check all those video boxes.

Traditionally, if you were buying those credits off of Rotor, all of that would've cost as much as $980 to make all of those videos. Now, you can make all of them under a $10 or $20 a month unlimited subscription plan. So, we really wanted to drive value to the artist so that they can then make those videos and monetize it and complete all the things that they need as an artist to give their release the best chance of success.

Too often we heard, you know, I can't make all these videos. It's too much money. I don't see the ROI of making these specific DSP-level videos." They're not getting, like, YouTube revenue off of those, for example. now that goes away. , You can make videos for your entire back catalog if you want under that one plan, uh, and not pay a single extra cent.

[00:24:11] Dmitri: Wow. I mean, I can't even imagine. I go back, you know, I've been in the music industry for a little while, so I'm thinking about the cost of music videos from when I started decades ago versus saying, "Oh yeah, for 10 to 20 bucks a month, you can make unlimited videos." And by the way, you need to if you're gonna be on YouTube the right way with a lyric video.

You need to if you wanna have that visual engagement in Spotify and Apple. Plus, if you wanna make just a song video as well. You multiply that times 10 or 12 songs and all of a sudden-

[00:24:39] Darryl: Yeah

[00:24:39] Dmitri: ... it's a lot of work. I mean, the labor alone, even if you shoot it with your phone and you edit it on CapCut, it's a lot of work.

So yeah, that's crazy. You know-

[00:24:48] Darryl: Yeah

[00:24:48] Dmitri: ... I wanna go back to one more question, and then understand something about record labels before we wrap up You know, before you had this verified artist program, I don't even understand how lyrics got places anymore. who should own and manage an artist's lyrics and sync data?

'Cause the other thing we haven't talked about is, like, there are moments, where lyrics are being used visually somewhere, where you want the lyrics to hit at the same time that the song is happening or the video or whatever. But what are the risks when it's left up to the old way of doing it of third parties?

I'm really curious about that because I'm assuming that didn't... This is new, where artists can actually control it and verify it and also, , validate it.

[00:25:29] Darryl: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, certainly there's multiple risks. One is just overall coverage. With so much music being released, if it's left up to, our content team internally to transcribe the lyrics, they can only do so much.

So just the risk of the lyrics not being on the platform at all is a big one. But beyond that, there's accuracy, , and getting that deeper meaning. There's... we have a wonderful team. We have over 100 people around the world that are transcribing lyrics and doing their local regions and trying to understand everything.

But even for us who have been doing this for 22 years now. We're not perfect. We don't get everything right. we don't pretend to be perfect and there are cases where you really need the intimate knowledge of what the artist is talking about to get that, lyric exactly perfect and y- one of my favorite examples as a Toronto guy, and there's the song "Crab Bucket" by K-OS, right?

And in that song there's a line, "Walking down Yonge Street on a Friday." If I wasn't from Toronto, I would spell Yonge Street Y-O-U-N-G. But in Toronto, Yonge Street is Y-O-N-G-E, right? So, that's the type of thing, like, we obviously, we got that one right. we knew.

[00:26:54] Dmitri: Good

[00:26:54] Darryl: job. But, but we're not gonna know that for every single song in the world and that, you would-- it would be an understandable mistake to get that wrong.

Often only the artist can get those precise things perfectly accurate, or prevent a lot of those types of, innocent mistakes. So, being able to manage all of that and make sure that everything is there, a- and accurate is super important and makes sh- your music discoverable. The other big aspect of it is pre-release.

Being able to have your lyrics available right when a song comes out is incredibly important.

[00:27:37] Dmitri: Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

[00:27:37] Darryl: That way your fans immediately connect with the song. If We don't have access to it ahead of time, which the vast majority of time we don't. We can't add that lyric into our database until it's out on a DSP to be able to transcribe it.

That's not the case for an artist or a label. They obviously have the song. They can add the lyrics ahead of time. We can embargo them to make sure that they don't go out. and that way they're available from the very first stream. so there's that window at the beginning where you can capture not just that additional engagement, but additional monetization of your lyrics and those licensing royalties as well.

[00:28:19] Dmitri: I, I'm really curious about how labels with, like, large catalogs and rosters approach all of this at scale. I mean, you mentioned labels, and I'm just curious if there's more to say about , the enterprise approach to some of this management as well.

[00:28:32] Darryl: Yeah, certainly. So we, we do do artist, uh, or sorry, label-level accounts on our Verified Artists program.

So any label that's interested can just, either reach out to somebody on our, on our team or just email artistmanager@lyricfind.com and we can set up a verified account to manage multiple artists. it's pretty easy obviously to confirm who represents who, so the verification process can be quick and painless just with a list of artists, that are covered.

And then they can toggle through each artist on Verified Artists and make sure that they're managing all that content. They can sign up for Artists Unlimited, underneath Verified Artists with- within each artist. We can also do enterprise-level deals for the video services that are based on catalogs or multiple artists, and make all of that available for even further discounts with a lot of the large label accounts.

So, , then all of that can be managed centrally really, really efficiently, really easily, and make sure that not just all the content is available, but all the video content is created and available right with a release as well.

[00:29:44] Dmitri: Yeah, I, could see where, you know, if a label already has this kind of enterprise level of account, they're optimizing for all those artists.

Those artists can do all those things, or they can do it on behalf of the artists. Whether it's-

[00:29:56] Darryl: Yeah

[00:29:56] Dmitri: ... make sure the lyrics are there, validate and verify the lyrics, create videos, make sure there's official, lyric videos. , What do you do if someone-- what if a label comes with, like, thousands of songs that don't have official lyric videos?

How do you handle that?

[00:30:10] Darryl: Well, we can do bulk creation. And so we've done that, for a number of, of other labels where we're creating bulk, lyric videos. That's the Mother Mother example, Alan, for,

[00:30:20] Dmitri: Oh, that was part of a bulk deal?

[00:30:22] Darryl: That was part of a bulk deal where we-

[00:30:24] Dmitri: Wow

[00:30:24] Darryl: ... uh, we took, the album and made templates, and then just generated videos using our lyric database and our translations, for all of those videos really, really easily.

So we have a lot of methods where we can do extremely high volume video creation. So we've made thousands and thousands and thousands of lyric videos for people using those methods, uh, over the years.

[00:30:48] Dmitri: I mean, what you were saying earlier about just making sure you've got the official video, like, you can do it proactively before things get released and be ready to go so that nobody has any incentive to put up a unofficial video.

But it sounds like it's a safety net for monetization too. For a record label, it's almost like, yeah, you could go back to back catalog, that stuff that came out before lyric videos even existed on the internet and say, "Wait a second, do we have lyric videos for all this?" 'Cause we haven't turned on monetization in a real way.

Those, what did you say? 5X factor of having an official video versus unofficial and go back. I'm really curious before we wrap up, because, we keep unlocking these little crevices, Darryl, and, you know, the theme of Music Tectonics this year has been rising tide, grow the music, grow the value. And I always think of LyricFind's creating a revenue stream out of something that honestly was an expense.

I mean, lyrics, it's, you know, obviously lyrics is a key part of the song, always has been. But, like, printing the, uh, the liner notes actually cost you some- something, you know? And now you're saying, well, actually it's a separate revenue stream. As we look at this as a new revenue stream, I think YouTube is such a big one.

 is there data around what kind of YouTube monetization, you've seen with these kind of lyric videos?

[00:31:58] Darryl: Yeah. Actually, we ran an analysis not too long ago on a number of the videos that we had created, so the, bulk lyric videos that we've created. So it's over thousands of videos that we had done to figure out just how much money was being earned off of them and what was the, ROI and kind of the time-based ROI.

So the data that came back out of it, and this is across all the videos, so- Big artists, small, artists, translation videos, regular videos, across the board. The average lyric video, including the translation videos, was being viewed about 44,000 times a year. And that average monetization of that was $141 a year per video.

So, on the surface, that's, you know, not a lot of, views necessarily, and it's not a lot of money necessarily. But now when you imagine, okay, that's over thousands and thousands and thousands of videos, all of a sudden this turns into millions of dollars a year that are generated off of these videos, off of an asset that costs next to nothing to make.

[00:33:11] Dmitri: Right.

[00:33:11] Darryl: Especially under our new unlimited subscription tiers. I'll throw that plug in there. so it only takes a little bit of time. So if you're an artist or a label that has a back catalog of thousands of songs and you don't have an official video out there, this is the best way to have an official video that is there to get that traffic and have a presence on YouTube and capture that, monetization.

If you have 100,000-song catalog, using those averages, you could be making $14.1 million a year by doing lyric videos for them, and that's a significant amount of revenue that's being left on the table by artists and labels and especially people running legacy back catalog.

[00:33:59] Dmitri: Yeah. Amazing. Wow. I know we've covered a lot of ground here.

I'm hoping our listeners kept up with all the information you shared 'cause we covered so much stuff. Darryl, it's really, really cool what you've built with LyricFind, you and your, co-founders. And, amazing to see that you went and took care of the publishing side, which is really, really tough.

Now you're doing this monetization on the other side of the rights and going directly to artists, where artists can now not only control how they're being represented and how their lyrics are being represented, but then also marketing tools, monetization tools. It's... I mean, I love you as part of this rising tide theme because it really does lift all boats and, um, it's just great to be able to talk with you every once in a while and find out what you're up to.

Your thinking is, iconic. Thanks so much, Darryl. This has been a blast.

[00:34:45] Darryl: Thank you very much, Dmitri. Always a huge fan of everything that you do and of the, the Music Tectonics event and whole, family of Tectonics. So-

[00:34:56] Dmitri: Awesome. All right. Amazing. Thanks so much.

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The Music Tectonics podcast goes beneath the surface of the music industry to explore how technology is changing the way business gets done. Weekly episodes include interviews with music tech movers & shakers, deep dives into seismic shifts, and more.