Musixmatch says rival lyrics company LyricFind‘s antitrust claim against it is “without merit.”
The company was responding to a Second Amended Complaint that LyricFind filed against it in the US District Court for the Northern District of California on Tuesday (May 26).
“We maintain that the plaintiff is continuing to challenge a perfectly legitimate commercial arrangement that dates back to 2024,” a Musixmatch spokesperson told MBW.
“It remains our view that the claim is without merit and we remain confident in our legal position.”
The arrangement Musixmatch refers to is its exclusive deal with Warner Chappell Music (WCM), the publishing arm of Warner Music Group, struck in March 2024.
That deal sits at the center of a legal dispute that has run for more than a year.
In March 2025, LyricFind sued Musixmatch and TPG (which acquired a controlling stake in Musixmatch in July 2022), alleging that the WCM deal breaches US antitrust law.
According to the complaint, the deal gave Musixmatch the exclusive right to both sub-license WCM lyrics and supply that lyric data to digital service providers (DSPs), even those with direct licensing deals with the publisher.
LyricFind alleges the arrangement was built to force it out of the market by stripping its ability to offer a complete catalog of lyrics.
The complaint claims that Musixmatch services more than 80% of DSPs by streaming volume and has deals with six of the seven largest DSPs by global subscribers.
The Toronto-based company also claims that Musixmatch and TPG pursued a “buy or bury” strategy against it.
In documents seen by MBW, LyricFind alleges that TPG tried to acquire it in 2023 and, when that failed, leaked confidential information about the company to Spotify.
A US federal court allowed much of the case to proceed in September 2025, while dismissing some of LyricFind‘s claims.
LyricFind says it filed the latest version of its complaint after its lawyers reviewed documents gathered in the case.
In a motion to amend, LyricFind’s lawyers wrote that its initial document review had identified “several pieces of highly inculpatory evidence” that, the firm says, directly substantiate its claims and “leave little doubt as to the anticompetitive nature of Defendants’ conduct.”
The new filing adds TPG Growth V Management, LLC as a defendant, alongside TPG Global, LLC and Musixmatch.
It also seeks to claw back what LyricFind calls the “supracompetitive profits” that Musixmatch has earned from the alleged scheme.
LyricFind alleges that Musixmatch forces independent songwriters to pay for a service called Musixmatch Pro to have their lyrics displayed on platforms including Spotify and Meta.
It says it offers a rival service for free, and argues that Musixmatch will be able to raise prices on songwriters once competition is removed.
Musixmatch has rejected LyricFind‘s claims at every stage of the case.
In a motion to dismiss filed last year, Musixmatch called the lawsuit “meritless” and “a textbook example of a disappointed competitor seeking to use the courts to achieve what it could not in the marketplace.”
A Musixmatch spokesperson has separately said that LyricFind sued because “it failed to secure rights and win a contract” with Warner Chappell Music.
Musixmatch was founded in Bologna, Italy, in 2010. TPG acquired a controlling stake in the company in 2022.Music Business Worldwide