LyricFind Expands Asian and African Operations, Launches Teams in India and Sub-Saharan Africa

The pioneer in licensed lyrics, LyricFind, continues to expand into new regions and languages. The company is announcing two new remote teams in India and South Africa. In addition, its Vietnam team will now cover significant new East Asian languages.

“As something we’ve long anticipated, the demand for lyrics in a wide range of languages continues to grow,” explains LyricFind CEO Darryl Ballantyne. “We’re committed to offering high-quality, vetted, licensed lyrics to service providers, platforms, and fans around the world, and we’ve found the best way to do that is to invest in local organizations that have the right expertise to provide the level of service our partners expect.”

LyricFind’s new India service has focused on extensive charts and back catalog in Hindi and Marathi, with more regional languages on the way. In addition to the new language team in India, LyricFind’s long-standing team based in Hanoi, Vietnam has scaled up to expand its capacity, adding lyrics in both Cantonese and Mandarin to its current roster which includes Malay, Bahasa, Thai, Tagalog and Vietnamese.

LyricFind’s Johannesburg team will cover ten essential southern African languages including Afrikaans, Zulu, Sotho, Xhosa, Tsonga, Venda, Tswana, Northern Sotho, Swati, and Ndebele. Other African languages are in the works for later this year. “Music consumption across Africa and Asia is growing rapidly, and lyrics have a powerful part to play in this growth,” Ballantyne says. “We’re excited to add these ten languages, and counting, to our offerings.”

This expansion is an extension of LyricFind’s commitment to cultivating the highest quality lyrics in the industry. “We have the largest publishing team in the world, and the highest number of professional lyric editors in the business. The reason major partners like Google and Amazon turn to us as a primary lyrics provider is for the proven quality our process generates, and our focus on building a substantial local presence and expertise around the world to ensure that,” notes Ballantyne. “Our teams know the local music landscape and work tirelessly to gather, edit, and timestamp lyrics in their territories’ respective spoken languages. Well-trained, professional teams with local knowledge in important markets are the key to the extensive coverage and the on-going excellence of our service.”

About LyricFind

LyricFind is the world’s leader in licensed lyrics solutions and is trusted by some of the biggest names in the industry, including Amazon, Google, YouTube, Deezer, Microsoft, Soundhound, iHeartRadio and many others. LyricFind provides its partners with an extensive catalog of accurate and fully legal lyrics, licensed from all the majors, as well as 6,000 other publishers (approximately 55,000 catalogs) and PROs around the world. LyricFind's premium reporting infrastructure is also built to properly track and pay royalties to songwriters and rights holders on a song-by-song and territory-by-territory basis.

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Joy Ruckus Club Takes Over Bandsintown LIVE, Highlights Young Progressive Asian-American Artists

Two days, all genres. All donations go to support the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter Movement

Bandsintown is teaming up with Koreatown-based label Red Kloud Society to convene the Joy Ruckus Club (joyruckusclub.com), a streaming festival led by and celebrating young Asian American artists, their many perspectives, and their collective support of Black Lives Matter. The festival will stream on Bandsintown LIVE August 1 and 2, 2020, going from 7pm-3am ET/4pm-12am PT on Saturday August 1, and 5pm-1:30am ET/2pm-10:30pm PT on Sunday August 2.

The Joy Ruckus Club artists originate from all over North America and span genres from hip hop to experimental indie pop. That, says the festival organizers, was by design. “We selected artists from all major regions of America and Canada (and a few territories abroad), representing the diversity of the Asian American ethnic diaspora,” explains Red Kloud founder and festival organizer Kublai Kwon. “Joy Ruckus Club made an effort to find new young faces in the Asian American scene. This event will break new talent and push the culture forward. Joy Ruckus Club curated a lineup of specifically progressive-minded Asian American artists who wanted to perform in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.”

This show of solidarity and support, while showcasing the creativity and diversity of the community, resonates with Bandsintown’s vision for livestreaming as a medium that can connect fans with artists in new, intimate ways. “This event, with its mission, creativity, and ability to bring people together, is the kind of initiative we were hoping to encourage when we started Bandsintown LIVE, says Fabrice Sergent, Managing Partner of Bandsintown. “It’s connecting people around a significant cause, in a way that would have been challenging in real life. The potential of livestreaming is especially exciting for emerging artists who long to find common ground with kindred spirits and new listeners.”

Kwon agrees: “No one wants to be locked down, but with the rise of the feasibility of livestreaming events such as Joy Ruckus Club, the opportunity to include a wide geographic distribution of artists in one event has become possible in ways that a live event could not easily pull off,” he reflects. “So with livestreaming, Joy Ruckus Club can influence, with a minimum of expense, a unified Asian American culture across the entire North American continent, which would be very difficult and expensive to do with a live concert.”
 
For more information about the event, please visit the Joy Ruckus Club website at www.joyruckusclub.com/ or the Bandsintown LIVE platform at live.bandsintown.com/.
 
 
The Joy Ruckus Club Lineup
 
Day 1 (Hip hop; August 1)
Streaming on Bandsintown LIVE from 7pm-3am ET/4pm-12am PT

Micah Street
DJ Hannah Enoy
K Park
Chow Mane
Jason Chu
Kazuo
Nyukyung
Uzuhan
Dane Amar
Jackie Faye
J.Lately
Saint
Kyaro
Alan Z
Malasung
Eranetik
The WHOevers
Aleebi
Scope G
Kien
Laynoprod
Aryan Kapoor
Pzycho Sid x Critz x Ashtin
Lil Lonely
 
Day 2 (Rock, R&B, Pop, Acoustic; August 2)

Streaming on Bandsintown LIVE from 5pm-1:30am ET/2pm-10:30pm PT

Katherine Ho
Joel Kim Booster
DMZA
Xuan Nghi
Ashya
Cheryl K
Fettish
Ellie Lee
Juliette Louie
Mike Park
HMLT x Kei-Li
Goldawn Won
DJ Seduza
DJ Gieezy
Leoncarlo
Anneston
Annettely
Elise Mas
Kyu Hun Han
St. Lenox
Nono Chen
Wendi

About Bandsintown
Bandsintown celebrates artists and helps them grow their careers. As the most trusted source of live events recommendations, Bandsintown helps fans discover artists, their music and go more often to live events. With a reach of 160M Monthly Active fans globally, 55M registered concert goers and 530k touring artists registered to the platform, Bandsintown is a world-leading marketing solution for brands to engage with music enthusiasts at scale.  
Visit the Bandsintown website at www.bandsintown.com/.

About Red Kloud Society
Joy Ruckus Club is a COVID-era Asian American virtual festival organized by Red Kloud Society, a Koreatown, L.A.-based record label founded by Kublai Kwon in 2015. A pioneering architect of the Asian American music scene, Kublai Kwon has been active from his base in Los Angeles since 2001, having launched his career as the concert promoter behind the Asian Hip Hop Summit which eventually expanded to become an annual festival tour spanning all of North America.

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Surround Hires Ethereum Pioneer and Experienced Software Exec George McIntyre as CTO

Surround, the blockchain-powered ecosystem for the music business, is announcing its newest hire, George McIntyre, who is joining the company as CTO. A seasoned developer, McIntyre has decades of experience, including in digital media and blockchain, leading teams at companies like Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM. 

“We’re excited to have George with us. His work dovetails well with everything we have planned for Surround in the coming months,” says Stefan Schulz, Surround CEO. 

An experienced CTO and Systems Architect, McIntyre’s experience spans all software engineering domains and levels. He has been developing software for over 35 years for leading software companies including Oracle, Microsoft and IBM and collaborated with top academic institutions thanks to projects at Stanford and MIT. He has also worked to develop new digital media codecs and formats. Accustomed to managing 100+ engineers and multi-million dollar budgets, McIntyre is no stranger to the executive table. 

“With his background as both an executive and a developer, George brings the right balance of technical and management savvy to our company,” Schulz explains. “He was also an early pioneer of Ethereum and other blockchain technologies with hands-on expertise in the crypto space, making him ideally placed to lead the Surround technology group.”

“I’m delighted to be taking up this new position and I’m looking forward to helping to drive the next phase of Surround’s evolution and growth,” McIntyre says.“Technology is set to completely revolutionize the way the business of media is carried out, and Surround will be the platform that will finally make a seamless interoperable marketplace a reality. I’m thrilled to get the chance to work with such an experienced team of industry veterans to make this dream a reality."

About Surround

Bitfury Surround was founded in January 2019 and tackles the challenges of artists and other stakeholders in the music industry. The Surround platform is a fully interoperable digital ecosystem for the exchange and monetization of copyrights. Surround is an asset management and commerce platform for music IP that will offer a copyright control center and a music technology marketplace. It will improve economic opportunities for the entire music industry by providing multiple blockchain-based management services, including the secure transfer of copyright assets. Surround’s goal is to significantly increase the value of copyrights and strengthen trust, transparency and efficiency.  www.surround.com

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