Former BMG Publishing CEO Nicholas Firth joins musiXmatch’s Advisory Board as Chairman

  musiXmatch has appointed former BMG Music Publishing CEO   and chairman Nicholas Firth as chairman of its advisory board.

  The move comes as the company announces it has signed    up all of the major publishers to its site after closing a deal    with Warner/Chappell and EMI Music Publishing earlier this  month.

musiXmatch is building a fully licensed database of lyrics that  other websites and mobile apps can plug into via its API. It matches the metadata submitted by publishers to the 6m+ lyrics on its database and presents this to third parties as a white label solution. Lyric searches can be treated by these third parties as a standalone proposition or as a value-add on, an existing music service.

Firth’s career in music publishing began in 1962, where he worked for the Chappell Group, then a division of PolyGram BV, culminating with simultaneous positions as President of Chappell International and Vice President of the PolyGram Publishing Division, which he held from 1981-1985. Subsequently, Mr. Firth was a shareholder and CEO of Music Theatre International.

His grandfather and great uncle, Louis and Max Dreyfus owned Chappell & Company in New York and London.

In addition to his duties at BMG, Firth is involved negotiating music publishing industry agreements in the U.S., Europe and the Far East.

Nicholas Firth serves on the Boards of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA), the International Music Publishers Association (IMPA) and the Third Street Music School Settlement.