What’s Really Going On With Lyrics and DSPs

Jakob Wredstrøm

Internet will just follow how quickly it uploads. Usually most internet connections care as this fine. But at the top of your screen, like five seconds, you should be able to see like a percentage bar.

Darryl Ballantyne

Yep, 49, 54, 75, 80.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah, that's more than enough. So it just means that you have proper speed, which means sometimes if it's too slow, you need to stick around after the call, so just finish uploads.

Darryl Ballantyne

Yeah, just make sure that thing is at 100 % before I disconnect. Yeah.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah. Great. The way that we usually do it is that the podcast runs between 35 to 55 minutes. I suspect this one being more at the shorter end just because it's a very compact topic we're discussing. And it's going to be hard to sort of unfold it in a very like...

Jakob Wredstrøm

Adventure narration, it's like there's going to be a lot of like compact information about it.

Darryl Ballantyne

Yeah, and obviously there are going to be things that I'm just not allowed to talk about yet that the lawyers won't let me say and that where normally there's like a long list of things that I would love to say, but...

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah, and I will try to keep it within the frameworks of sort of your press release and then sort of understanding your journey, but then also like broader commentaries on monopolies. I think that would be nice again, to the extent that you want to comment on it, but I guess you will have lot of reflections on it by now.

Darryl Ballantyne

Yeah.

Jakob Wredstrøm

And so that's what I'm to guide us through. What really works the best if it's very dialogue based, which means if there is a question I ask that could, you know, give a very long-winded answer naturally, if you can break that down into pieces, that really works. And I see with all the episodes that wherever we are able to make these long answers into dialogue based conversation, it works so much better for the audience. There's more retention. It's more interesting. So that's really the only thing you need to sort of focus on and I'll carry you through the rest as much as I can.

Darryl Ballantyne

Sounds good.

Jakob Wredstrøm

And then the last piece of information is that, well, two things. We can edit it. So if you say something you want to do again or something you regret, we can edit it. So we can do questions again.

Darryl Ballantyne

This just...

Jakob Wredstrøm

And the second thing is that we do the intro the same way with the podcast for everyone and that is I do a very brief introduction like five ten seconds and then I say welcome Darryl and then I ask who are you and what do you do? So very simple question So basically describe who you are and what you do and then I ask you about lyric find and the current situation you guys are in And that's gonna sort of lead the discussion into the whole topic I will also use your founder's journey somewhat of like a light in this whole thing. like your journey and how you initiated and also how the dynamics of the industry now, but I don't have a clear like direction of how I'm going to do that. So that's kind of what ever finds natural.

Darryl Ballantyne

Mm-hmm.

Darryl Ballantyne

Yeah, so the outline that you had sent before, I talked about the journey and then building the infrastructure and then got into the exclusivity stuff. Do you want to get more straight into the exclusivity stuff and then weave the other parts in or?

Jakob Wredstrøm

I'll somehow wing it a bit just because this is not a typical episode. It's the first one I've actually had. I was supposed to do one actually tomorrow about the whole Suno thing with a licensing expert. But I usually don't cover these things. think there was just so much interesting commentary around the whole topic that's why I wanted to have it on. So I'm somewhat going to wing it based on how I see the conversation going. But I'm going to take starting point in... the agenda I sent over. But it might be a bit different of how I sent it over.

Darryl Ballantyne

Okay, fine. We can roll with it.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Great. Okay. Do you have all your devices on due to disturb? Great. Then I will start in five seconds.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hey guys and welcome back to the Sound Connections podcast. Today we have Darrell in the studio. Welcome.

Darryl Ballantyne

Thanks, happy to be here.

Jakob Wredstrøm

I read a very interesting LinkedIn post a few months ago about Lyric Find and about the whole journey you guys are going through with a lawsuit. And we'll cover this a lot in this conversation, but I thought what an interesting conversation to have about lyrics and DSPs and monopolies in the music industry. And it was just so timely to talk with you about it because there's obviously a lot happening in general in music when it comes to these things. But Darryl, for the people who don't know you, who are you and what do you do?

Darryl Ballantyne

Well, I'm Darrell Ballentine. I'm the founder and CEO of Lyric Find, which we've been doing for 21 years now, plus more, depending on how you want to measure it from the first time we originally tried to start Lyric Find. So it's kind of been my entire life straight out of university. So it's really been like the only thing that I have done is Lyric Find. And we are the backend for music services and DSPs and other places that want to legally use lyrics and our objective is to make sure that publishers and songwriters are properly paid for that use and that DSPs can have a better service as a result.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Amazing. So the second most natural question is, what does Lyric find?

Darryl Ballantyne

Lyric Find is the backend aggregator for the rights and content for the use of lyrics online. So that's our core business has always been licensing of lyrics. work with tens and tens of thousands of music publishers around the world to put all their rights into a one-stop shop along with all of the actual lyrics content itself. So we have a huge team of people, both here in Toronto and in various places around the world that sit and transcribe the lyrics. build up that database, we match that to the licenses that we have from the publishers, and then we package that together to provide a fully licensed service to a DSP, a mobile app, a website, or anybody else that would like to use Lyric, but doesn't want to do tens of thousands of licensing deals, doesn't want to create a database of millions of lyrics and synchronization and translation and that, can come and get it from us in one spot. As well, in the end of 2023, we acquired a company called Rotor Videos that's based out of Belfast that does self-serve video creation for artists. So that's creating things like lyric videos, which is how we got to know them and learn about how great they are, Spotify Canvas videos, Apple Motion Art, artwork videos, and regular music videos. So that's a newer and growing part of the business as well.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Amazing. You know, one might think when you think about this particular topic and this particular part of the industry that it's, you know, it's quite niche. You know, it's, not something I think about as like a natural thing to go into as a business, but again, that's something you've been steady building for 21 years. But recently there's been a big disruption into that niche, if you might call it, where there's come in a player that's been sort of working, uh, monopolistic, or that's at least the argument. And that's also hence the lawsuit. Not because I want to start out strong, but I think it's really important to set the scene. Like. what is happening right now with your lawsuit?

Darryl Ballantyne

Yeah, so while I can't get into the behind the scenes of what's going on, I can certainly talk about our allegations and the backstory on it. as we understand it, in March of 2024, our primary competitor, Musixmatch, entered into what we allege is an anti-competitive exclusive deal with Warner Chappell Music Publishing, which made them not only the only source for rights, the only third party source for rights for Warner Chappell's catalog, but it also made them the only source for the actual lyric data itself that Warner would allow. So that caused a huge amount of issues. a year behind the scenes trying to resolve the situation amicably and with the help of our team and talking about how it is an anti-competitive deal. Unfortunately, we weren't able to reach a resolution. So in March of this year, we did have to file an antitrust lawsuit against Music's Match and their private equity owner, TPG, for monopolization claims. It's an unprecedented deal. It's something that has never been done before and creates a situation where, for example, clients of ours who have a direct license for the use of lyrics from Warner Chappell. So if we look at Deezer, Google, others, for example, we've been forced to cut off delivery of the actual lyric text itself to them, even though they have a license for lyrics for that use directly from Warner Chappell. So.

Darryl Ballantyne

It certainly doesn't make any sense in that respect, but on top of that, this anti-competitive deal was entered into as Spotify was in the process of integrating our service and getting very close to the point of switching to using Lyric Find as their Lyric provider in place of Music's Match. And direct deal negotiations between them and Warner were cut off, and they were told that even if they had a direct deal, with Warner, they couldn't use us to source the lyric text itself. So their choice was taken away, their ability to work with the provider of their choice was taken away, and they were forced to renew their license with Music's Match at what we allege is significantly higher cost to them. And it really has all of the hallmark traits of a monopolization that really, really harms the industry, not just DSPs, but it harms smaller publishers who don't have the ability to negotiate direct deals who could see their royalties reduced in the wake of this exclusivity. It harms artists who are already forced to sign up for Music Match Pro and pay to have their lyrics distributed, which is something that Lyric Find does not charge for. We do not believe it's right to charge artists for the right to distribute their lyrics. That's something that we should be paying rights holders for. songwriters for, not charging artists for, and if they're the only path to get into these services, we allege that those prices could be extremely high then and those artists would have no choice. There's also implications in the precedent set by creating exclusivity over data distribution itself. What happens to other entities in the music industry that handle digital assets

Darryl Ballantyne

but don't themselves have a license. If you think of all the services that supply the audio files, they don't have licenses with music publishers. Does that mean that those businesses are all entirely infringing businesses and suddenly somebody could have an exclusive over the ability to distribute audio from a publisher? What about... digital distributors themselves who have independent artists who upload cover songs that are then controlled on the publishing side by a music publisher who could enter into an exclusivity or that, or claim exclusive rights, or any rights at all over the distribution of the audio file to people that have a license. It really breaks the entire digital music supply chain if this precedent is allowed to stand and creates a huge amount of issues that we're only just scratching the surface of.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm, very well described and obviously we won't go too deep into the actual case for many different reasons, but we'll talk about it somewhat in your journey and also sort of the broader commentaries. one thing that's very worth noticing for the audience, even though I can't call it somewhat niche part of the music industry, like you guys are still doing significant payouts to rights holders. Can you maybe explain sort of what you have provided rights holders throughout the years?

Darryl Ballantyne

Yeah, it's certainly a niche business, but it's growing significantly. It's become something that is a core piece of all DSPs where every major DSP has lyrics. at this point, it's a core part of the experience that users really want and it's grown from static lyrics to synchronized lyrics to word by word lyrics and translations and numerous other features that continue to get added in to make the experience better. We paid out and facilitated approximately $25 million to rights holders in 2024. So, you and we're only one of the players. We're the smaller player in this industry and the potential keeps growing and growing as streaming gets bigger and bigger as well and we open up new markets. So while it is small and I was at the NNPA annual general meeting in New York a couple weeks ago and it... David Israelite had a wonderful slide up there about the different categories of publishing revenue and lyrics was its own category. And the fact that it's on the list at all in the top six or seven, however many income sources that were on that list are, is pretty meaningful. Even at one or 2 % of the overall publishing revenue pool, it's at this day and age, a really significant revenue stream and something that is very important. to the overall music experience.

Jakob Wredstrøm

And sort of coming back to sort of monopolistic movement, obviously that's something we've seen in the music industry for a while across many things. And there's been many lawsuits, not all have been won or sort of been closed, but... Monopolies have always been a big danger in the music industry and there might be many reasons for it and my guess would also be somewhat unindicated. But one thing that maybe has some truth to it is because the music industry comparatively speaking is rather small compared to other creative industries or just industries in general. whenever there comes powerful players in, like PE companies that has the old mission of really optimizing the revenue and the profit of a company that they buy, they become these very questionable morals, behaviors of companies that really has, very rightfully so, a model that just needs to bring profit to the owners. But in an industry where music that oftentimes takes the form of kill everyone else because there's so little to be had, if that makes sense. Is that what you're experiencing in this case? You know, at least what you sense or like, how can you bring a broader commentary maybe to that angle?

Darryl Ballantyne

Well, certainly on the P side, it tracks directly with what we've experienced in this. And the fully unredacted complaint is now available, which tells the story of how in 2023, TPG, Music's Matches owner, attempted to acquire us and failed. We turned them down in part because of antitrust concerns. When that failed, then they took this other step to monopolize the industry through this exclusivity. And even in between, they tried to sabotage our relationship with Spotify by divulging confidential information that they had learned in that process to them, violating our non-disclosure agreement that we had with them. So there is a series of events here where a private equity firm tried to... monopolize an industry, tried to unfairly compete in multiple different ways in order to monopolize an industry even further and maximize their profits. That's why they're charging artists for access. That wasn't something that they did prior to TPG's ownership. That's why they've been trying all of these other tactics and we don't know what they paid Warner for the exclusivity, we can guess that it was fairly significant. we'll find out when we get into Discovery and the truth will all come out. But certainly that's something that we have seen here and we see it in other areas of the music industry as well with consolidation by PE firms and others too. control certain segments and if you can control a segment then you can leverage that. And that is really a core part of that playbook is control and leverage.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Can you describe, you know, if someone might try to really profit even more on lyrics, how would they go about it? Like, who would see price hikes? Who would be paying the bill? Who would be paid less in a situation where anyone would try to make more profit out of the industry? Who's the losers here?

Darryl Ballantyne

So there's lots of different options. There's lots of different leverage positions that can be taken. And I'll couch this by saying these are hypothetical things that could happen. But we've seen some of them already. For example, price hikes to DSPs. Forcing Spotify to not have a choice of who their lyrics provider would be and pay more for a lyric service.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Sure.

Darryl Ballantyne

because that's the only pathway to have Warner Chapel content and therefore a complete service. That's step one. Step two, with monopolized pathways to all the DSPs and artists who want to have their lyrics there, charging them for access to have their lyrics available and a complete service for their fans. You could easily see a world where the price of those services goes up and up even more than it already is. Already it's something that Lyric Find's position is that an artist should never have to pay for that. That's not something that we think is right at all. We shouldn't be extracting more money out of artists, particularly independent artists. Step three, music publishers themselves. Now all the major publishers are still going to be able to go and do direct deals with the DSPs, but there are tens and tens of thousands of independent publishers out there. DSPs are not going to want to do licenses with each and every one of them to have their Lyric rights there. So it's very easy to see a world where a monopoly player then says, well, instead of your royalties being here, now they're going to be here. And you're going to take that because it's better than zero, because you're either licensing through us or you're not getting any Lyric's revenue at all. So you can have extreme downward pressure on royalty rates to independent publishers. Obviously all the other providers that are in the lyric business get hurt by this as well. There's us, there's Genius, there's Sync Power, there's others that provide lyric data or services that are all cut off. DSPs themselves can't even create their own lyrics under the terms of this exclusivity. We are currently in a world where from a technical reading of what we've been told about this exclusivity is that a DSP can't source lyrics from any other place other than Music Smash for Warner Chappell songs either wholly or partially owned. So an artist can't submit their own lyrics to Spotify or Apple or others. A publisher, a co-publisher can't submit them.

Darryl Ballantyne

A label can't submit them. A user, you can't use user generated content. An employee at a DSP can't sit and transcribe those, those lyrics themselves. If, if that's not an unfair monopoly situation, I don't know what is, right? It just is nonsensical. So.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm. And, know, one of the big covers there is about this in the music industry in general has been that it is a somewhat fragile industry in many ways, just because it's consisting on many independent players that maybe are not making enough to have like the luxury margins. And all of these revenue streams really matter in order to sort of have things go around. You know, I've been working, sort of a bit of independent labels in my past and I, know, I saw what was going on. Oftentimes it's sort of somewhat painted by us is that, know, labels even, you know, bigger and bigger labels have some sort of like alternative motive of pressing money out of people. like the reality is, it's just a really rough business to run. Like publishing is a penny business and you know, you need to build something up over 20 years like yourself in order to actually have a, you know, reliable business. And, and there is no winner in that race. It is just, you know, step by step. So for me, that's the most worrying things. If you really look at what actually happens in the industry, then it's like those small revenue sources, and this is a one to 2%, they might constitute a big part of the small margin they have. And you've removed that, they might even not have anything. and that's actually the truth. It's not just guest relation. That's how slim margins a lot of these companies operate on. So it can have big consequences if things like this shift.

Darryl Ballantyne

Yeah, and for an indie artist that is working their ass off just to get by and really putting all sorts of effort in, if all of a sudden it costs them, right now the cheapest Music's Match Pro plan is like, I think it's $36 a year, right? $36 a year just to get their lyrics on there then they're not. they're not making the royalties back off of that or if their royalties are cut off for other reasons because of negotiation leverage where they're not getting paid for that at all anymore. We have thousands of artists that we're paying small amounts to every year but those are the artists that it matters to the most. Those are the ones where $20, $50, $100 a year from lyrics makes a difference. I guarantee you Taylor Swift doesn't care about her lyrics revenue. She's doing just fine. She's making a lot of money off of lyrics, but it's not making a difference in her life. But the indie artists who are the ones that are set up to suffer the most from things like this are the ones that it really matters the most to.

Jakob Wredstrøm

So have you experienced the industry reacting with you? What's the support that you've been able to find out there?

Darryl Ballantyne

Yeah, it's been overwhelmingly positive support, which anytime you come out and publicly file something like this in the industry, there's always a lot of division. It has been incredible. We haven't heard a negative thing at all about it from all the feedback that we've been getting. Because people understand that. This doesn't make any sense. It takes away choice. It sets up the industry for failure in the future. Not just from all those stakeholders that I mentioned earlier, but even from the major publishers and others, there's a lot of risk in this precedent and what could happen and where the leverage lies that we hear feedback from major publishers and others that this just seems absurd and seems crazy and they can't believe that this type of deal was done. So it's been really, really wonderful and especially on a personal level for me, all the people that I've gotten to know over the last few decades and having overwhelming support from people that, even people that I don't always agree with, that this is wrong has been... has been very meaningful and great to hear.

Jakob Wredstrøm

That makes sense. You know, coming back to your founder journey, like this is your whole professional life. I think it's also, it must be very conflicting also as a founder seeing like what you've built up step by step over 20 years is not necessarily disrupted by technology, which is a normal thing you can't adopt to if you're progressive enough. But by you know, let's assume unfair play. Like, what's your, what's your take on it from like a personal standpoint as a founder? Like how do you feel about this? I know you've covered it, but really interesting to sort of hear your emotional role of course there.

Darryl Ballantyne

Yeah, and an emotional roller coaster is the right way to put it. Mean, we went from, you know, talking about an acquisition and exploring that and having valuations done and things that are life-changing generational wealth levels of money to a few months later, this exclusivity deal is done and you're looking at it and thinking this could all go to zero if this is all going. To go to zero and it's your entire life's work and all of your personal assets are caught up in this business that you've spent your life building. It's not hyperbole to say that when we first found out and we're going through this, it was probably the worst week of my life of trying to... process this and what it meant and what we could do. And then, you know, fortunately we had antitrust lawyers on speed dial from the previous year and were able to get some good advice and good conversations and realize, oh wait, you know, they can't do this. This is anticompetitive. This is against the law. Therefore we have a path forward here. You know, it was very, very rough for a little while. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. It was very depressing and very scary that it could all disappear until we realized that there was a light, there was a way to get through it, and what they had done was against the law so we could save the business. But ultimately that still ends up being up to the court. We feel very, very good about it. Ultimately, it hasn't been decided yet and it will take time and lots of money.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah. But one of things that worries me and I'll say this because you've probably walked through all the scenarios yourself is that there is a traditional playbook that's happening here that's happened over and over again in the music industry. That is do something wrong and then ask, sorry, you say sorry later. And then basically using the time period between you've done something wrong and then you need to say sorry to sort of change power dynamics. Does that make sense? If that's, know, trying to make a company go bankrupt or forcing a negotiation on the table that shouldn't really be there. And, you know, we see that with certain platforms like Suno and Udio just repeating the same thing that happened in the music industry for many, many years. It's just like do something very disruptive that's not morally, ethically, and probably legally correct, but still leveraging that in order to now go into a licensing deal with the majors. And that's something that's happened over and over again. And then for me, what I really hope doesn't happen in this case is that they have so much power and so much lack of... something that they try to strategically also make the other competitors really weakened in the process. Have you read something into that?

Darryl Ballantyne

Yeah, that's absolutely what's happening now. It wasn't just Spotify that lost their choice. We lost iHeartRadio as a client because we couldn't provide Warner content. So we're not a viable option. And every week that goes by, there's another client or potential client that needs to have a complete service and doesn't sign with us as a result. And once a service is integrated with a provider, it's very difficult to switch. It's a lot of work to switch. So it becomes a scenario where they gain all of this share of market during this period where we can't offer a complete service because of what we allege is their anti-competitive deal. And even when that conduct is fixed, those clients are going to be very, difficult to get them to switch back because they've already invested in the time and effort and resources to integrate with Music's Match rather than us and switching is hard. It's a lot of work. The value isn't necessarily there. So the damages to us compound indefinitely even after the behavior is wrecked.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah, that is, know, again, I can't speak to the motivation, but that is at least a repeating strategy that some disruptors in the industry have used. Disruptors not necessarily in the good way. What's sort of the response from your competitors or colleagues, whatever you want to frame it towards this case as well? Like, have you seen like a broader reaction from the others?

Darryl Ballantyne

I mean we've seen their filings and that they filed a motion to dismiss with what, in my opinion, are some of the worst arguments I've ever seen. So I feel good about that. But for the most part, they've been pretty silent. So feel free to reach out to them and see what they have to say for themselves. But I think the silence speaks volumes.

Jakob Wredstrøm

What about the other providers like Genius for example? Have you seen similar lawsuits from them?

Darryl Ballantyne

They haven't filed anything at this point. Don't know if others are planning on filing or if they're just going to let us fight the fight. But we certainly know that all the other providers in the space are not happy about this and don't think that the exclusive deal is fair either.

Jakob Wredstrøm

It's really interesting to see what's happening with music because it's You know, one of the things we cover a lot in podcast is whether or not this is attractive space to operate in and one of the things that I usually argue is that the opportunity cost might be a bit skewed in the music industry and generally speaking it's not like great to go into it. I think there's certain exceptions like being early movers or you know having some sort of luck or angle that most people don't have but I think what this also does on a broader level is just having consequences about the sentiment of going into music, building companies in music, when these things keep on happening in some sense other. And that's for me, one of the biggest issues outside of the actual case is there is not enough money at large to withhold this, let's call it dirty play. And it just, it really has ripple effects on so many things about the industry. What do you believe is the best case scenario for you guys? Like if you see like, okay, this really goes well. Like what do you hope for the company? How do you, how do you see this going in the future?

Darryl Ballantyne

I mean obviously we want to restore competitive balance in the industry. We want our clients and all other services that use Lyric to be able to choose the provider that they want to work with and not be forced into working with anyone, a particular company that they don't want to. But beyond lyrics, I hope that we can set a precedent that nobody tries to do this type of thing again in other parts of the industry. All those different areas before that I talked about, people handling data or that, the precedent that this would set would have a massive chilling effect on those businesses and their potential liability and potential risk to their business. And you talk about people coming into... to the industry and challenges with the industry and innovation in that and even achieving profitability in the music industry, any investor, any entrepreneur that looks at this, if this was allowed to stand, would quite reasonably say, why would I start a business in the music industry if this is what can happen, if this is something that... as you said before, has nothing to do with technology or being out-competed in innovation or that it's just an anti-competitive deal that was made that locks out an entire segment of the industry and reinforces a monopoly that's there, even to a company that has been around for 21 years. That's something that is just going to destroy any drive to innovate in this industry. And as an entrepreneur, we can sit here and say, quite honestly, that if we were evaluating industries to start a company in, this would be a massive red flag. And investors will look at it the same way. So I think it's a very dangerous present set.

Darryl Ballantyne

In the best case scenario, the entire industry learns a lesson from this and takes steps to make sure that this does not happen to anybody else. And if we're the sacrificial lamb, then so be it. But we have to stand up for what is right and we have to stand up for fairness. And it's kind of like the Canadian in us coming through, I guess. And unfortunately we had to do it through a legal route, which we really didn't want it to come to, but here we are. So I hope that everybody learns and nobody else has to go through what we're going through.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Even though it's a sort of a sad note to end on, I know that the future is very much still yet to unfold. I don't know the case meticulously. I've read what I've read. But I really hope for all of us that there is some sort of solution here that also seems fair at the end. And I agree like this cannot be a thing in our industry. There's no there's not room for these red flags It's something that we're all building towards making them less red, you know having more fairness having more profitability in the businesses having more margins and this is not a great contribution to that because You know, I speak with founders hundreds of founders in this space and one thing I want for all of them is just a more viable business to do business So that's my journey of hope. Darrell, thank you for your time. It was amazing just hearing a bit about the journey. And even though it's a bit short today, I think it's also a lot to think about. There's a to take in and follow you. How do you follow your case to the boom forward? Where do you post updates?

Darryl Ballantyne

There's if you go to lyricfind.com slash open letter that's our initial statement when we filed the case we will likely have additional updates posted there as well as things progress but you know certainly we encourage everybody in the industry who cares about this precedent that could be set to speak publicly about it. Talk to people that are in the industry that are, whether it's rights holders or other partners, make sure people understand the implications of this, that it is not just about lyrics, it's about all facets of the business. Know, even for example, if we look at the implications of the fact that this exclusivity covers partially owned lyrics as well. Partially owned copyrights. Imagine we went and did the exact same exclusivity with Sony Music Publishing. And there was a song that was co-owned by both Sony and Warner. Nobody could then provide the actual lyric text. Would be an undistributable song. So it's just absurd. And people need to understand those. So talk about it. Tell all your friends, so to speak. Make the views known so that people are aware of the implications. That can be really helpful to us to have everybody in the industry really understand what's truly going on.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Amazing. Dara, thank you for your time and thank you for being with us.

Darryl Ballantyne

Thank you.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Perfect, that was great. I know we didn't cover it all in the agenda, like, for me I felt it's just really...