Darryl Ballantyne

Founder and CEO of LyricFind

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 licensed lyrics database in the world, servicing top clients across multiple industries. LyricFind has also established long standing licensing relationships with over 6,000 music publishers, The Harry Fox Agency, APRA/AMCOS, CSDEM, APEM, and many more.

The company delivers services to online platforms and music services including Google, YouTube, Deezer, Pandora, Microsoft’s Bing, Amazon, SoundHound, SongMeanings, iHeartRadio, and many more.

LyricFind also offers fans a new way to support their favourite artists and songwriters with LyricMerch, the first on-demand custom lyric merchandise platform of its kind. Users can customize a selection of products with a lyric from any song, and be confident in knowing that songwriters and rights holders are receiving a portion of every purchase.

As an authority on licensing and digital content, Darryl has spoken at industry events including SF Music Tech, Canadian Music Week, Music Matters, Digital Music Forum, Music & Media Finland, CMJ, MIDEM, SXSW, and 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.