Performance & Music Rights

When to Use This Skill

Use this skill when a nonprofit arts organization needs the legal right to perform, play, record, or screen someone else's copyrighted work: securing amateur or professional production rights to a play or musical from a licensing house, understanding what a venue's ASCAP/BMI/SESAC/GMR blanket music license actually covers, getting permission to record or stream a production, or licensing a public film screening. The user is typically an executive director, managing director, producing director, or marketing/gala staff member asking: "how do we get the rights to Into the Woods," "what will our royalty quote be," "does our ASCAP license cover the musical," "can we livestream or record the show," "we want to screen a movie at our gala," or "the high school is doing our show — do they have rights?"

Boundary: This skill covers rights clearance for performance, venue music, streaming/archival/video, and film screening. Commissioning a new work — playwright agreements, IP ownership, approvals, co-commissions — is nonprofit-arts-commissioning-new-work (a commission makes the org a rightsholder, not a licensee). The org's own obligations as the rented venue — insurance, house rules, whether the org's PRO licenses flow down to renters — is nonprofit-arts-venue-rental-earned-income. Union terms triggered by recording or streaming (Actors' Equity, SAG-AFTRA media contracts, AFM) and artist visas or foreign-artist tax withholding are nonprofit-arts-union-agreements-visas. General contract risk review, insurance, and indemnification strategy is nonprofit-risk-management. Building the royalty line into the annual or production budget — and season selection tradeoffs when quotes come in too high — is nonprofit-budgeting (and nonprofit-arts-season-planning for title selection). School partnerships and teaching-artist logistics are nonprofit-arts-education-programs; the rights for a student matinee of a licensed play are handled here.

The One Distinction That Drives Everything: Grand Rights vs. Small Rights

Before touching any license, get this right — nearly every music-licensing mistake a nonprofit makes traces back to confusing these two:

• Small (nondramatic) rights cover performing a song as a song — a concert, a recital, lobby and preshow music, a cover band at a gala, a cabaret set where the number stands alone. These are what a PRO blanket license (ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, GMR) grants. ASCAP's own licensing FAQ is explicit: an ASCAP license authorizes nondramatic performances, including songs from dramatic works performed in concert.
• Grand (dramatic) rights cover performing music in the context of a dramatic work — a musical, opera, ballet, or revue that tells a story, and any performance where the song carries the plot or is performed in character. These are licensed only by the work's rightsholder (the author's licensor — MTI, Concord Theatricals, etc.), never by a PRO blanket. A PRO blanket license does not cover dramatic use — there is no blanket, no annual fee, no exemption that clears Wicked, a jukebox musical, or even "Defying Gravity" staged with costumes and staging that tells the show's story.

Practical tests: is the music presented with a plot, in character, or as part of a staged story? Grand rights. Is the same song sung at a standalone concert with the audience told what they're hearing? Small rights. Is the org staging a concert production of a musical (score in sequence, book scenes, staging)? Still grand rights — "in concert" framing does not convert a musical into a nondramatic performance. When in doubt, ask the rightsholder; do not assume.

Two adjacent rules that bite nonprofits:

• The "as is" rule. A production license (MTI's Do's and Don'ts page states this plainly) requires performing the show as written. No cuts, no added songs, no gender flips, no re-ordered scenes, no new orchestrations — without prior written permission from the licensor. Budget time for written change requests; some (and all involving music) go to the authors.
• Nonprofit status is irrelevant. 501(c)(3) status, free admission, small audience, educational purpose — none of these waive copyright. TRW's FAQ is representative of every house: a license is required for every performance whether or not admission is charged. The only statutory exemptions that matter are narrow: worship services (17 U.S.C. § 110(3)) and face-to-face classroom teaching of nondramatic literary and musical works (§ 110(1)) — a student matinee of a play before any audience is not exempt.

Part 1 — Who Owns What: The Licensing Houses (verified September 2026)

Play and musical rights sit with a handful of licensing houses. Catalogs have consolidated fast — verify the current rights holder for every title before planning, because a 2023-era memory is already wrong:

How to find who holds a title in 2026: search the title on Concord Theatricals' and MTI's sites first (between them they hold the overwhelming majority of the licensed canon), then TRW, Dramatic Publishing, and Pioneer; the American Association of Community Theatre (AACT) publishes a PlayFinder that maps titles to current rights agents. If no house lists it, the rights may sit with the author's agent or be restricted entirely. Do not assume from memory — the BLG/Stage Rights move into Concord happened in May 2025 and older lists (and older assistants) still route those titles wrong.

One trap that saves money: works in the public domain (Shakespeare, Chekhov, Gilbert & Sullivan scores) carry no performance royalty — but a specific adaptation, translation, or musical arrangement of them is copyrighted. You can stage Shakespeare; you cannot stage a publisher's acting edition of it without a license.

Part 2 — The Royalty Quote Process (Before You Budget, Before You Announce)

Run this workflow in order. The organizing principle: the quote is an input to the budget and the season, not a formality after them.

1. Identify the rights holder and the availability window. Search the title across the houses above. Check the title's page for restrictions and blackout territories before falling in love. Completion: you know which house controls the title and whether it is even licensable in your market for your dates.
2. Submit the license application with full, honest numbers. Every house quotes from the same core inputs: seating capacity of the venue, ticket prices, number of performances, whether admission is charged (and free performances are not automatically free of royalty), amateur vs. professional status, production dates, and venue location. Understating capacity or ticket price to get a lower quote is a misrepresentation the license will catch up with. Completion: applications submitted to every candidate title (apply to 2–3 titles when budget flexibility matters).
3. Name your tier correctly: amateur vs. professional. Houses price and gate these differently. Amateur/community and youth licenses are cheaper and more available; professional licenses (paid artists, and especially any union-affiliated production) price higher and often restrict amateur productions from using professional casting. If the org pays its performers, expect to be quoted professional — and expect Equity territory questions (route the union side to nonprofit-arts-union-agreements-visas).
4. Read the quote as a package, not a single number. A typical license quote bundles: (a) the per-performance royalty (the main variable — sized to your capacity and ticket price); (b) materials/rental fees (scripts, scores, orchestrations, rehearsal tracks — rented, returnable, with deposits); (c) sometimes a security deposit; (d) handling fees. Budget the package, not the headline royalty. Completion: the total license cost sits in the production budget (nonprofit-budgeting conventions) before the title is announced.
5. Expect restrictions, and read them before signing. Standard ones: geographic/market exclusivity (the licensor will not license the same title to a neighboring company in overlapping dates — and a national tour or Broadway revival can place a hold on your entire region); run limits (your performance count is hard-capped; adding a performance requires written approval and more royalty); amateur/pro tiers; cast size and staging constraints; no advertising before the license is signed. If the org's marketing calendar depends on announcing early, get the license first.
6. Comply through closing. Perform as-is (no changes without written permission); use the contracted billing/credits exactly; order scripts/scores from the licensor (not photocopied); report the actual performance dates; return rented materials by the deadline; do not extend the run without written approval. Completion: post-closing royalty report filed and materials returned.

If the quote comes back too high for the budget, the lever is title substitution (an older title, a school edition, a public-domain work), not performing without rights.

Part 3 — Music in the Venue: PRO Blanket Licenses and GMR

Any org that plays music publicly — preshow and intermission playlists, lobby music, a cover band at the gala, a concert series, a recital — needs licenses from the performing rights organizations (PROs). Four operate in the United States, and each exclusively represents different songwriters; no single license covers all four:

• ASCAP and BMI — the two giants, operating under decades-old DOJ consent decrees that shape their rate structures.
• SESAC — the third traditional PRO (SESAC Music Group).
• GMR (Global Music Rights) — founded 2013 by Irving Azoff as the first new U.S. PRO in nearly 75 years; represents only 175+ songwriters (Bruce Springsteen, Billie Eilish, The Who, Drake, Pearl Jam), but they are among the most-performed catalogues. GMR licenses are negotiated individually — there is no rate court — and its enforcement litigation record shows it sues unlicensed venues.

The mechanics that matter to an arts org:

1. Audit what the venue already holds before buying anything. Many theatres and presenting facilities already carry ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC blanket licenses through the building; if the org is a resident company, check whether the house licenses cover the org's performances or only the renter-of-record's. If the org is the landlord, renters' music obligations are a rental-agreement term — route to nonprofit-arts-venue-rental-earned-income.
2. Know what the blanket does not do. A blanket license covers nondramatic performance only. It does not license: the musical or opera itself; a staged revue arranged around the songs; any dramatic use (Part 1). It also does not cover recordings — the sync/mechanical side of playing recorded tracks is handled through other licenses the venue may need depending on use.
3. Buy to your actual programming. Blanket fees are set by venue type, seating capacity, and use (live vs. recorded, number of performance days). A concert-series org needs the full PRO stack; a gallery playing ambient background music has a smaller use case — but still needs each PRO whose repertoire it plays. Skipping GMR because "nobody checks" is a bad bet given who GMR represents.
4. Concert productions of dramatic works still need grand rights. Staging Jesus Christ Superstar in concert, with costumes or the book's framing, is a grand-rights request to the rightsholder — the PRO blankets do not clear it.

Part 4 — Streaming, Archival, and Video: Separately Licensed Grants

The single most common false assumption in nonprofit theater: "we have the rights to the show, so we can film it." No. Copyright gives authors exclusive control over reproduction; a performance license grants performance only. Recording — archival, streaming, promo clips, festival submission, even "just for the cast" — is a separate grant, and for many titles it is simply not available:

• Why video rights often don't exist. MTI's guidance is representative: the authors retain the sole right to decide whether their work is recorded, and film studios often hold options on the mechanical/video rights of musicals (they pay to reserve film potential), making the grant unavailable at any price. "No" is a normal answer for current Broadway titles.
• Archival-only licenses exist for select titles. MTI sells a Video License rider for participating shows: in the U.S. its standard rider runs $75 for one non-commercial, home-use-only archival recording, with priced options to add copies for cast and crew (the UK office prices the same grant at £100 + VAT, or £200 + VAT with up to 100 cast/crew copies). The grant is archival only: no public screening, no posting, no streaming, no festival or competition submission, no distribution. Read the rider's allowed-copies terms before promising DVDs to the cast.
• Streaming is its own license class. MTI structures it as three separately-quoted models — live-streaming a performance with paid tickets, scheduled exhibition of a pre-recorded capture, and video-on-demand — each per title, per dates. Most titles are not streamable; where they are, expect per-viewer or per-performance fees on top of the stage royalty. Filming a stream also implicates the unions (Equity/SAG-AFTRA/AFM terms for captured media) — route those riders to nonprofit-arts-union-agreements-visas.
• Marketing clips are a license question too. The performance license governs what may be shown publicly; do not assume a sizzle reel or YouTube excerpt is covered. Ask for written promo permissions with the license, and get archival/streaming riders signed at the same time as the main license — negotiating a rider mid-run is slow and sometimes impossible.

Part 5 — Film Screenings: Swank and MPLC

Federal copyright law is blunt here (Swank's FAQ, aimed exactly at nonprofits, says it plainly): buying, renting, or streaming a movie does not grant the right to exhibit it publicly — regardless of audience size, nonprofit status, the age of the film, or whether admission is charged. Two licensors cover nearly everything, and they serve different cases:

• Swank Motion Pictures — per-title, per-event licensing. This is the path for any advertised screening or event where the film is the program: a gala screening, a themed fundraiser, a film series, a drive-in night. Swank quotes per movie per day based on audience size, screening location, date, admission pricing (and number of cars for drive-ins). Confirm title availability and execute the license before promoting the event — studios restrict certain titles, dates, and regions.
• MPLC — the annual Blanket License (formerly "Umbrella License") for unadvertised, recurring, casual exhibition: youth-program movies, lobby and lounge screens, member events, closed-group screenings. One annual fee based on organization type and size covers unlimited screenings from member studios (Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, NBCUniversal, Paramount, and other majors) with no per-title reporting. Its hard restrictions: no advertising the screening to the public and no admission fee. A license is required even if no admission is charged — free does not mean exempt.

Decision rule for the user: film as an event (promoted, ticketed, or the evening's centerpiece) → Swank quote per title. Film as ambient or program activity (unpromoted, free) → MPLC blanket. And note the same grand-rights logic as music: the MPLC blanket does not authorize a ticketed film festival — that is per-title licensing territory.

Standard Deliverables

1. Rights clearance memo — for each candidate title: current rights holder (verified on the licensor's site, dated), availability in the market for the proposed dates, quote status, restrictions, and total license package cost vs. the production budget.
2. License application package — the information every house asks for, ready to submit: venue and seating capacity, dates and performance count, ticket prices and admission model, amateur/professional status, cast size, and any requested changes needing written permission.
3. License compliance checklist — billing credits, script/score sourcing, no-change rule, performance count cap, reporting deadlines, materials return date, and which riders (archival video, streaming, promo clips) are or are not included.
4. Venue music license inventory — which PRO blankets the org (or its building) holds, for which uses, and the gap list (which of ASCAP/BMI/SESAC/GMR is missing, and whether any planned use is dramatic and therefore outside blanket coverage entirely).

Common Failure Modes

• Performing without a signed license. Announcing, rehearsing, or opening on an "application pending" assumption. Unlicensed performance is willful infringement exposure — statutory damages run $750–$30,000 per work, up to $150,000 per work for willful use (17 U.S.C. § 504(c)). Fix: no title announced before the license is signed and paid.
• Assuming the PRO blanket covers the show. Staging a musical — or even a story-driven revue of its songs — on an ASCAP/BMI license. Blankets cover nondramatic performance only; dramatic use requires grand rights from the licensing house. Fix: run the Part 1 test on every music use in the season.
• Budgeting royalties before quoting. Guessing a royalty line, then discovering the per-performance royalty priced to the org's capacity and ticket prices busts the production budget after contracts are signed. Fix: quotes are an input to budgeting (nonprofit-budgeting) — get them first.
• Assuming nonprofit or free admission exempts the org. Every house and every court says otherwise. Fix: treat rights fees as a production cost line like any other.
• Modifying the show without written permission. Cuts, song swaps, re-orchestration, bilingual editions, added roles — all violate the as-is term. Fix: submit change requests with the application and wait for written approval.
• Filming or streaming "just for archives." Even a single archival recording requires a video rider; posting any of it publicly goes beyond even that. Fix: request video/streaming riders at license signing, and budget the rider fee with the license.
• Screening a movie from Netflix, a DVD, or a personal stream. None of these convey public performance rights, regardless of how informal the event is. Fix: Swank for advertised/ticketed events, MPLC blanket for unpromoted recurring showings.
• Relying on a stale roster of licensors. The May 2025 Concord acquisition of Broadway Licensing Global means Broadway Licensing, Dramatists Play Service, Playscripts, and Stage Rights titles now route through Concord Theatricals. Fix: verify the rights holder on the licensor's current website for every title, every time.
• Missing GMR. The org carries ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC and assumes it is covered; a lobby playlist full of GMR writers (Springsteen, Eilish, Drake) is unlicensed, and GMR litigates. Fix: audit the actual repertoire played against all four PROs.

Verify Before Acting

House rosters, catalog ownership, and available-edition facts in this skill are anchored to sources verified as of September 2026 — the licensing-house landscape has consolidated repeatedly (Concord absorbed Samuel French 2018, Broadway Licensing absorbed Dramatists Play Service 2021, Concord absorbed Broadway Licensing Global May 2025) and will keep moving. Before planning a production: confirm the rights holder on the current licensor website, request the actual quote (every figure in this skill's mechanics is set per production and will differ from any example), check whether the title is restricted in the market, and read the draft license for run limits, exclusivity, change-permission terms, and recording/streaming riders. Before executing any license — and before relying on any PRO compliance position — have counsel or an experienced licensing manager review, since these agreements bind the organization and carry infringement exposure. PRO fee schedules and the ASCAP/BMI consent-decree framework are also periodically revised by the DOJ; check each PRO's current rate structure when pricing venue coverage.