MusiXmatch aims to make online lyrics legal with new €400k round

MusiXmatch, a “lyrics in the cloud” company, has announced €400k of new seed funding.

The Italian company is tackling the online music lyrics space, and whilst there are already tons of websites offering free lyrics, very few, if any, actually have the rights to do so. Additionally, Max Ciociola, MusiXmatch’s founder and CEO noticed that the word “lyrics” is one of the most searched for terms on Google in the US and worldwide.

This new seed investment come from Francesco Micheli Associati, a fund that has already financed some of the best Italian home-runs including GiocoDigitale (sold to Bwin) and Born4Shop (now merged with SaldiPrivati, with tens of millions of revenues). MusiXmatch previously received a €150k seed round from a former Dada executive. The new capital will be used to further develop the product; a Round A is also said to be in negotiation.

The goal is to build the most extensive legal lyrics database on the planet and feed it to other websites via an API. The strategy is to keep the system open — 3rd parties can plug their data into musiXmatch’s metadata platform and musiXmatch will track, clear and monetize each lyric view on their behalf.

The Bologna-based company says it’s closing deals worldwide with music majors to gain the right for lyrics. The DB as of today counts more than 4m matched lyrics and is believed to be the biggest available.

The distribution model will be based on cloud APIs and the business model will be ad-based and include a revenue sharing deal.