{"id":6316,"date":"2025-06-06T18:00:14","date_gmt":"2025-06-06T18:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/musixmatch-rips-meritless-lyricfind-antitrust-case\/"},"modified":"2025-06-06T18:00:14","modified_gmt":"2025-06-06T18:00:14","slug":"musixmatch-rips-meritless-lyricfind-antitrust-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/musixmatch-rips-meritless-lyricfind-antitrust-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Musixmatch Rips ‘Meritless’ LyricFind Antitrust Case"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tA<\/span> court battle over the future of online lyrics is getting heated.<\/p>\n

\n\tMonths after LyricFind accused Musixmatch of seeking to monopolize the market for providing lyrics to streamers like Spotify by signing an \u201cunprecedented\u201d deal with Warner Music, the rival is striking back \u2013 demanding that a federal judge toss out the case entirely.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe lawsuit claims that Musixmatch violated federal antitrust laws, but in a motion to dismiss the case filed on Thursday, the company says all it did was beat a competitor.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cLyricFind, unable to convince WCM to do business with it instead, has filed this meritless antitrust suit \u2026 hoping it can obtain through litigation what it was unable to win in the marketplace,\u201d the company\u2019s lawyers write. \u201cStripped of buzzwords and hyperbole, the core of LyricFind\u2019s Complaint is simply that WCM chose Musixmatch instead of LyricFind.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe legal war between the two lyrics providers kicked off in March, when LyricFind accused Musixmatch of engaging in unlawful conduct that had \u201celiminated competition and raised prices.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the center of the case is an agreement that MusixMatch struck with Warner Music. LyricFind claims the major labels have historically licensed their vast catalogs of lyrics on a non-exclusive basis, allowing firms to compete for the right to provide them to streaming services. The lawsuit says the new deal with Warner was instead an exclusive deal that allegedly shuts out competitors from offering the music giant\u2019s lyrics \u2014 an \u201cunprecedented\u201d approach.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMusixmatch\u2019s goal was simple: make sure that Spotify, and other [streamers], have no choice but to obtain [lyrics] from Musixmatch despite its higher fees \u2014 a plainly anticompetitive result,\u201d the company\u2019s attorneys wrote at the time. (Neither Warner Music nor Spotify were named as a defendant in the case or accused of any wrongdoing.)<\/p>\n

\n\tBut in Thursday\u2019s response, Musixmatch said it had done nothing wrong, arguing that antitrust laws are designed to \u201cprotect competition, not particular competitors.\u201d The company said LyricFind had turned to the courts simply because it was \u201cangered\u201d that a customer had cut ties.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cLyricFind\u2019s alleged injury flows from WCM\u2019s lawful decision to end its relationship with LyricFind, which means that LyricFind would have been injured regardless of whether Musixmatch or a different firm was appointed as WCM\u2019s agent,\u201d the company\u2019s lawyers write.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNor has LyricFind plausibly alleged how it is foreclosed from competing in the marketplace: the Complaint is conspicuously silent on the duration of the agreement, and contradictory and implausible allegations about the actual scope of exclusivity defeat any plausible claim of substantial foreclosure.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tA rep for LyricFind did not immediately return a request for comment on Friday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A court battle over the future of online lyrics is getting heated. Months after LyricFind accused Musixmatch of seeking to monopolize the market for providing lyrics to streamers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6317,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[358,294,4946,6216,4947,5622],"class_list":["post-6316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-antitrust","tag-case","tag-lyricfind","tag-meritless","tag-musixmatch","tag-rips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6316\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}