MusiXmatch is the world's largest legal lyrics catalog with synced lyrics for over 8 million songs across 80+ languages. The API gives developers access to lyrics, translations, and metadata for music apps, karaoke products, and fan engagement features.
If your application needs the words to a song shown to users — and you want to do it without violating publisher copyrights — MusiXmatch is one of the few legal options.
The licensing reality
Music lyrics are licensed by music publishers (Sony Music Publishing, Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner Chappell, Concord) and you cannot legally display them in your app without a licensing agreement.
MusiXmatch has those agreements at scale. They license the lyrics to you and pay royalties to the publishers on the back end.
Spotify, Instagram, Apple Music, and Shazam all use MusiXmatch for the lyrics features in their apps. The legal positioning matters for production planning.
Five clean use cases
Music discovery apps that show lyrics alongside playback. Karaoke and language learning apps that need word-level synchronization with audio.
Music education tools that teach songwriting through annotated lyrics. Streaming platforms (Spotify-style products) needing lyrics features for engagement.
Translation apps for non-English speakers wanting to understand foreign-language songs. Mood-based playlist generators that use lyrical sentiment as a signal.
Where it does not fit
If you are running a lyrics website that wants to display lyrics in browsers via SEO-friendly URLs, MusiXmatch's terms restrict that. They require lyrics to display only inside applications, not on indexed web pages.
Genius and AZLyrics are not licensed alternatives. They operate under fair use and DMCA takedown frameworks which are legally riskier.
For a serious project displaying lyrics on the web, the answer is either MusiXmatch's web-display tier (limited and more expensive) or LyricFind which licenses for web use.
Getting started — application required
Apply at developer.musixmatch.com. They review applications which can take a few business days, partly because they want to verify legitimate use cases.
The free Developer plan provides up to 2,000 API calls per day with access to lyrics search, track matching, and a 30% snippet of song lyrics (not full lyrics).
To get full lyrics access, you need a paid Commercial plan with prices typically starting around $0.005-0.02 per call depending on volume. Pricing is custom and negotiated based on your use case.
The API surface
REST with three core resource types. Tracks (search, get details, find by ISRC), Artists (search, get albums), and Lyrics (get matched lyrics, get synced lyrics).
Track matching is the differentiator. You can pass a track title plus artist name OR an audio fingerprint OR a Spotify URI OR an ISRC code, and MusiXmatch resolves it to the right song in their catalog.
The fingerprint matching uses MusicBrainz IDs internally and is robust to title spelling variations.
Synced lyrics — the premium feature
Each line of lyrics comes with a millisecond-precision timestamp, so your app can highlight the current line during playback.
The format is LRC (the same format used by old Winamp lyrics plugins) extended with finer granularity.
Word-level synchronization (highlighting individual words karaoke-style) is available on higher tiers and for select catalog tracks.
Pricing details that matter
The Developer free tier is genuinely useful for prototyping. Build your app, test the integration, validate users want the feature.
The moment you go live publicly, you need the Commercial tier and that is a sales conversation, not a self-service sign-up.
For an indie music app expecting 10,000 daily active users querying lyrics for 5 songs each, you are looking at 1.5M API calls per month which translates roughly to $500-1,500/month depending on the negotiated rate. Larger products have committed-use contracts.
Limited alternatives
- LyricFind — main competitor. Comparable catalog size, similar pricing model, slightly stronger in web display rights.
- Genius API — free but the lyrics it serves are user-contributed without publisher licensing. Using Genius lyrics in a commercial product is a copyright risk that can result in DMCA takedowns or lawsuits.
- AZLyrics — has no public API and explicitly prohibits scraping.
- LRCLib — for non-commercial open-source projects, this crowdsources synced lyrics and has a free public API. The catalog is much smaller and the licensing position is grey.
Production details
The track matching endpoint is the most important to get right. Passing both ISRC and Spotify ID maximizes the match rate.
Cache match results aggressively because the same song queried twice should not consume two API calls. Use the matched track ID as the cache key.
Lyrics themselves can be cached for 24-48 hours but check the API response headers for cache directives. MusiXmatch occasionally pushes corrections to lyrics and your cache should respect their TTL.
The legal piece is unusual
Your terms of service, your privacy policy, and your API client implementation all need to comply with MusiXmatch's display requirements.
Every lyrics view must include an attribution link to MusiXmatch and the song's source page.
Failure to comply can result in your API key being revoked and contractual damages. Read the developer agreement carefully before launching.
Documentation reference: developer.musixmatch.com. The MusiXmatch Pro Developer Discord is the fastest channel for integration support. The pricing page is intentionally not public — you talk to their sales team for commercial rates which is normal for licensing-driven APIs.