Brazilian Licenses: Latin America’s Biggest Market Now Includes Legal Lyrics
LyricFind seals deals with Brazil’s main publishers and PRO, creates new legally licensed market for Brazilian lyrics.
Brazil is Latin America’s largest music market, and now its writers and publishers will be paid for lyric displays online thanks to LyricFind. These partnerships embrace major publishers like Som Livre and MK Music, as well as UBC, Brazil’s largest Performing Rights Organization, and finally Brazil’s biggest digital distributor, ONErpm. In the near future, these publishers will also have the opportunity to see their lyrics licensed on shirts, mugs, and other wares through LyricFind’s direct-to-fan platform, LyricMerch.
“Brazil’s music business is significant, accounting for over 15% of the revenue generated in South America. It is by far the largest Portuguese speaking/singing market in the world,” notes LyricFind’s VP of Music Publishing Robert Singerman. “In addition to a dedicated representative working on the ground to cultivate relationships in Brazil, LyricFind’s content team in Toronto, has Brazilian employees verifying and implementing Brazilian and Portuguese content,” - this legitimacy being a key aspect of LyricFind’s approach to vetted lyrics and lyric translations.
“Lyrics are key elements of the way we experience music, and I am thrilled to be able to work with international partners to increase the opportunities for Brazil’s many writers and publishers,” says Luciana Pegorer, LyricFind’s representative in Brazil. In addition to founding her own music company, Pegorer spent seven years at Warner Music Brasil and served as President for the Brazilian Independent Music Association, as well as on boards at WIN and Merlin. She and Singerman have collaborated extensively to build substantive ties between Brazilian and international music professionals and companies.
“This is the culmination of years of work together,” Singerman adds, himself a veteran manager, label exec, and international dealmaker. “This has great potential to increase Brazilian music revenue significantly worldwide, through original lyric exhibition and legal lyric translations.”
LyricFind hopes to license all the remaining unlicensed PROs and unlicensed independent music publishers and songwriters and eventually completely legalize and monetize all lyric display and usage for the publishers and songwriters. “Until now, Brazil has been an unlicensed or semi-licensed lyrics market and a completely unlicensed and unauthorized lyric translation market,” explains Pegorer. “We’re looking forward to building a robust monetized and completely legal landscape, as LyricFind did for lyrics in other territories.”
Singerman will be speaking on a panel, “Opportunities for digital music on social media and other services,” on October 26, 2018 at Music Trends Brasil in Rio de Janeiro, the music conference founded by Pegorer that will feature speakers from companies active in the music and tech space, including Twitter, Instagram/Facebook, and more.