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Your release day is often when you get a big burst of attention, and the weeks after bring a ton more. A lot of that attention comes from your most passionate fans, the ones who want to go deeper with you. Or even worse, it comes from a brand new fan who, if they were able to read the lyrics of your song, would become a bigger fan, understand you better, want to go deeper with you, buy tickets and merch, and become a lifelong fan.

For years, so many artists haven't had lyrics available for the first days or even weeks of a release. That no longer has to be the case.

That's a study I go back to again and again, and if you think about it for a second, you can figure out what makes you feel closer to an artist. It's often lyrics.

We all know that feeling. You hear a bar from an artist, and it makes you feel like they get the vibe you want. Music at its core is a mood-altering drug that makes you feel the way you'd rather feel, so when they say the line that makes you feel they get you, you're now tied to them.

Here's the funny thing. As someone who loves reading lyrics on Spotify while I listen along, or sharing the bars I love the most on Instagram, in the early days or even weeks of a release, the lyrics are often not up anywhere. That bums me out, since I can think they're singing one thing and it's something else entirely.

Part of why it's been like this for so long is that until recently you couldn't add lyrics to a release until it was out. Now, thanks to the sponsor of this issue, Musixmatch Pro, you can get it done while you're doing all the other setup work before release. Adding it to your distributor, updating your publishing info, scheduling social media, and now getting your lyrics ready to go live on day one.

That means your biggest fans sharing your song on Instagram release day will have your sick bars up on the screen, and the fans most engaged with your music have it ready to share right from the jump.

I can't tell you how important it is to have your lyrics up in case your song starts going viral on short form and people Google the lyrics. If nothing comes up, they're never going to stream it. Musixmatch Pro is the num ber one way people find lyrics when they Google them.

This happens all the time. I get emergency calls from consulting clients saying nobody is finding their song even though they're getting hundreds of thousands of views on short-form videos. Having your lyrics up can fix that.

Think about it this way. Somebody puts up a video using your song and doesn't tag the sound. Someone else sees it and Googles the lyrics. If those lyrics aren't up through Musixmatch Pro, they're probably not finding your song.

For a low price, you also get a pile of tools to make promo assets. I covered their full feature set in a recent issue of this newsletter, and you can dig into everything they do.

You can create Spotify Canvases, or make lyric videos with already time-synced lyrics in short formats built for Reels and social, which can then be turned into full-length videos for YouTube. I also put up a piece on making Apple Music and Tidal motion art with them, which helps increase your streams on those platforms. They can print your lyrics on merch really easily. They can also generate video backgrounds with AI based on your song's meaning or your album cover.

The whole point of doing this early is that it isn't a setback if your song starts doing really well. Once it's out, you can concentrate on more important things than getting lyrics uploaded. This is great work to do before everything starts happening.

You start from the artist on your roster, where you can add either a published release or an upcoming release. A published release is a song already out through your distributor and live on the DSPs. An upcoming release isn't out yet, which is the one that matters here.

To add an upcoming release, you need either an Apple Music link, which you get from your distributor once they populate the platform with your song, or the UPC your distributor gives you. From there, you enter the title, upload the cover art, and set your release date.

If you don't have a UPC yet, you can add the pre-release from scratch, and they'll create your songs' ISRCs when the release goes live so they can distribute your lyrics.

Once the songs from the release are in the system, you add lyrics. Click the song you want to work on and their AI lyric transcription tool will pull the lyrics out automatically. You upload your song to the site, and there's no worry about leaks since they don't store it. It's used for the extraction, and then it's gone off their servers.

You can also just paste your own lyrics in if you'd rather skip all that. It's very simple to paste into their interface and sync it up with their AI.

After it extracts the lyrics, there's a button to remove end line punctuation, since that doesn't read well on the apps. From there, you review the lyrics, review the sync, and fix any errors.

You can add songwriters and credits so they show up on Spotify. They also have an analysis that lives only inside Musixmatch where they tell you a potential meaning, the themes, and the mood. Some of you find it interesting what the AI comes up with. It'll even flag words the platforms may not be happy with.

Once that's done, hit send. You'll see a checkmark when your lyrics are set to be delivered to the platforms. It takes a little while to go live, and you can watch the status in the dashboard until it reads delivered to partners. Translations For Your International Fans

A lot of you end up with fans who speak other languages, and fans often use lyrics to learn a language. Learning from your favorite song is a much more fun way to do it than some AI owl nerd or whatever other app.

You can enable translation of your lyrics, and some songs are up in as many as 120 languages that show up on Google and other search engines that use Musixmatch as a source. The streaming apps each support different languages, so your lyrics will be there depending on what they support.

I know a lot of you are waiting for the catch.

Musixmatch Pro has a free plan for single artists who just need the basics. It's slow to get verified on that plan, up to 30 days, because they check every request manually. That tier does not include the pre-release feature.

The next tier is $29 for an entire year, built for people who need fast-track service. That's anyone going viral who needs their song showing up in search ASAP, or who wants to use the AI sync, or who needs to edit lyrics on tracks with featured artists.

Their Grow plan is $96 a year and includes the pre-release feature, plus the lyric videos I mentioned with their watermark removed.

The Plus plan is $216 a year and covers up to three artists, gets your lyrics on YouTube, and gives you lyric videos with translations.

If you run a management company or a label, they have manager plans where you can collaborate with your team and access bulk features like bulk lyric uploads on demand.

If you want all these tools to promote your music and take what you do to the next level, head over to Musixmatch Pro and use code JESSE15 to support what we do here and get their current best deal for readers.

That's code JESSE15.

Thanks for reading.