Licenses

Permission, a statute, or an exemption

Circular 1 says the owner has the right to authorize other people to use the exclusive rights. The Copyright Office’s musical-works explainer says that anyone else who wants to reproduce, distribute, perform, display, or make a derivative must get a license from the owner, use a statutory license, or have an exemption such as fair use. A statutory license is created by law. The Office says the owner cannot refuse a use that qualifies, which is a different bargain from a contract you are free to decline.

This page does not explain fair use, and it does not quote a statutory rate. Rates move. The license you are holding is the document that matters.

Mechanical, performance, print

A mechanical license is permission to reproduce and distribute a composition on phonorecords: the copy of the song inside a recording. Circular 50 says the composition owner has the right to make and distribute, or to authorize, the first recording of the work. Once a composition has been published in the United States on phonorecords, later recordings can be made under the compulsory license in the statute. Circular 73A is the Office’s note on that license. Interactive streams and downloads under the blanket license are The MLC’s chapter, not this paragraph.

A public performance license covers performing the composition in public. In the United States that permission is usually handled by a PRO, for the repertory that PRO licenses. Print is the ordinary name for reproducing and displaying the composition as sheet music or lyrics. It uses the reproduction and display rights. It is not a PRO blanket, and it is not a mechanical license for a recording.

Sync is two permissions, often at once

ASCAP tells licensees that it does not license the right to record music as part of a motion picture, video, or television program. It calls those synchronization rights and says they are licensed by the writers or publishers. If the picture uses an existing recording, the owner of that recording has to license the master as well. A supervisor who clears only one side has not cleared the cue.

Fees are negotiated. This guide will not invent a typical sync fee, a backend percentage, or a going rate for a trailer or a social ad. The number is whatever both sides sign. A public-performance license may still be required later, when the finished program is broadcast or streamed in public. That license does not replace the sync license that allowed the song to be married to the picture.

Search tools can help a supervisor find a recording that fits a scene. They do not grant the license. The license is still a deal with the composition’s rightsholders and, if a specific master is used, with the master owner. If you wrote the song, know whether your publishing deal lets you approve syncs, and know who controls the master. Keep one page that states, for each song, who licenses the composition and who licenses the master.