At 4:34 PM -0600 7/02/02, John Hughes wrote: >Where I live, there is a local seniors' group who put on a rather large show >once a year. I will be arranging all the music for a nine piece pit band. >There will be about forty songs involved. > >I wonder if anyone out there has had similar experience with this sort of >thing. My specific question is: how does one go about obtaining performing >rights? Is there a method by which rights can be obtained for them all in >bulk, or will we have to research the individual publishers and apply to >them all separately? This would be a daunting task. > >John Hughes
I did a whole bunch of this type of thing in my youth, about 20 revues total. Usually, it depends where the show will be. If it is in a hall where SOCAN (in the USA it's BMI and ASCAP) licenses are bought and paid for, then everything is taken care of. Even if it IS in a rec room of a seniors' residence where liscense are not paid for, it is not likely that the publishers are going to go after you for the $50 or so total that they are missing out on. Strictly by the law, your shows fall under Grand Rights (for dramatic works) rather than performance rights, but in the real world the publishers don't care unless it's a REAL big show, like Bdway or Las Vegas, and they think they will be out thousands of bucks. Grand rights are generally more expensive and restricted than performance rights, but nobody is going to care about your senior's group. I did dozens of well-advertised perfromances by local community groups right under the noses of the lawyers for these publishers, (in fact, some of the lawyers were involved in the show as perfromers and other roles!) and no body ever said boo. If you are worried, talk to the nearest ASCAP office. Licenses that last a year and cover EVERY performance of EVERY work in their library are quite reasonable. I don't remember how it is calculated, but I remember a church paying about $50 CDN for a year, about 15 years ago. When I was arranging for these kinds of revues, I worried about getting permission to arrange, which I knew from my university Business of Music class that I was supposed to obtain. I learned that in reality, even the case of HUGE recordings and MONSTER productions, permission to arrange is not even an issue, as the publishers want as many royalty-earning performances of the work as possible, in any arrangement at all, no matter how bad. They WILL, however, look askance on you publicly offering for sale competing versions of their commercial arrangements, as this takes money out of their pockets. Christopher _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
