Biography
Darryl Ballantyne originally conceived LyricFind in 2000 with Mohamed Moutadayne and Chris Book at Ontario’s University of Waterloo to be the largest, most accurate destination for lyrics on the Internet. Officially launched in 2004, the company pioneered the licensed digital lyrics space, successfully negotiating the first-ever mass lyrics licensing deal with EMI Music Publishing in 2005. Since then, Darryl has grown LyricFind to be the largest legal, licensed lyrics database in the world, with millions of licensed tracks available representing thousands of music publishers. LyricFind is also the first lyrics service to have true worldwide rights from all major music publishers (and many more).
LyricFind has established licensing and content relationships with over 3,000 music publishers, Rovi, The Harry Fox Agency, The Echo Nest, and many more. The company now delivers services to hundreds of web sites and mobile applications that want to enhance their music products with lyrics, including Microsoft’s Bing, Lyrics.com, Pandora, Shazam, SoundHound, Samsung, Nokia, HTC, MetroLyrics, SongMeanings, Universal Music, and mSpot. In addition, LyricFind offers two direct to consumer mobile applications, Lyrics Lite and Lyrics Pro for the iPhone, iPad, Android and Blackberry Playbook platforms.
As an authority on licensing and digital content, Darryl has spoken at industry events including SF Music Tech, MIDEM, SXSW, Canadian Music Week, Music & Media Finland, Digital Music Forum East and West, New Music Seminar, and many more. Before launching LyricFind, Darryl was Manager of Digital Development & Distribution at EMI Music in Los Angeles, where he was involved in deals with companies such as MusicMatch, Napster, and iTunes. Darryl earned a Bachelor of Mathematics with a Business minor from the University of Waterloo.