So imagine a local jazz band playing a cover
of the song Memory, you know, from the musical
Cats. Oh, yeah, classic. Right. And they're just
playing it in a crowded coffee shop. I mean,
nobody blinks an eye. It literally happens every
single day. Yeah, completely normal. But now
imagine a high school theater troupe singing
that exact same song. like on a stage, under
a single spotlight, maybe wearing cat ears. Okay,
yeah, that completely changes things. Exactly.
Suddenly, they have crossed this invisible legal
trick wire that could theoretically shut down
their entire production. Right, because the music
is identical. I mean, the notes are exactly the
same. But the context has completely shifted.
And in the eyes of the law, that shift changes
everything about who gets paid. how they get
paid, and who actually has the power to say no.
Okay, let's unpack this, because today we are
taking a deep dive into a highly specific, fiercely
guarded area of copyright law known as grand
rights. Fascinating topic. It really is. We're
using a really comprehensive Wikipedia entry
as our source material today. And our mission
here is to decode the invisible red tape behind
the music we experience in theaters, dance halls,
and, you know, on stage. Right, because most
of us just, well, we buy a ticket, take our seat,
and just let the magic wash over us. Yeah, we
don't think about the paperwork. But there is
this secret legal framework dictating where and
how we hear that music. And I think, you know,
when people think about music copyright today,
the conversation is usually dominated by, like,
streaming payouts or digital piracy. For sure.
Spotify, fractions of a penny, all that. Exactly.
But the distinction around grand rights opens
up a completely different conversation. I mean,
this isn't just a technicality in a contract.
No. It is a fundamental story about economic
leverage. human nature, and the extreme lengths
to which creators and publishers will go to protect
their most context -specific creations. Totally.
And I promise you, by the time we finish this
deep dive, you will never look at a local dance
recital, a ballet, or a massive Broadway production
the exact same way again. You really won't. So,
to even understand what makes a grand write so
special, we first have to figure out how normal
everyday music is licensed. We need to... to
establish the baseline. And looking at the source
material, it seems the music industry has essentially
divided the world into three completely separate
silos, right? Small rights, sync rights, and
grand rights. Yeah, that's the basic breakdown.
Let's start with the baseline. What exactly is
a small right? So small rights cover the non
-dramatic use of a musical composition. And these
are managed by organizations known as PROs, performance
rights organizations. Like Ace Cap and BMI. Exactly.
The major ones you might see on a little sticker
in a restaurant window. When a song is just functioning
as a piece of standalone audio, that is a small
right. OK. So the pop song on the radio, the
background music at the gym, or that jazz band
playing in the coffee shop we talked about earlier.
Right. So the PROs essentially function like
an all -you -can -eat buffet. That's a good way
to put it. Yeah, like a coffee shop owner doesn't
call up Taylor Swift's manager every time her
song plays on their Spotify playlist. That would
be a nightmare. A total nightmare. The coffee
shop just pays a flat blanket fee at the door
to Ace Cap or BMI. And in exchange, they get
access to this massive buffet of millions of
songs to play in the background. It's a volume
game. The buffet analogy captures the mechanism
perfectly. It is a blanket license for access
to a massive pool of non -dramatic music. Now,
contrast that with the second silo, sync licensing.
Sync is short for synchronization. This applies
when you want to take a piece of music and permanently
attach it to visual content. Like putting a classic
rock anthem over a car commercial. Yes, or a
somber indie track playing during the emotional
climax of a television show. Oh, or like a video
game opening sequence. Exactly. The key difference
here is permanence and medium. With a small write,
the music is fleeting. I mean, it plays in the
coffee shop and then it's just gone into the
ether. Right, it's temporary. But with a sync
license, you are inextricably linking that audio
to a fixed visual medium. You are fundamentally
changing how the audience will forever associate
that song. Oh, wow because of that You can't
just use the PRO buffet. You have to negotiate
async license directly. OK. Which brings us to
the third silo, right? The star of today's deep
dive, grand rights. Yes, the grand rights. So
the material defines a grand right as the specific
licensing required to perform a musical composition
within the context of a dramatic work. And it
explicitly lists things like musical theater,
concert dance, and arrangements of music that
originally came from a dramatic work. Right.
And here is the massive catch. The big PROs,
the ASCAPs and BMIs of the world, they are entirely
locked out of this. Like they are legally barred
from licensing grand rights. Yeah, what's fascinating
here is that the industry has drawn a strict,
almost philosophical boundary around the word
dramatic. In one silo, the music is just music.
In the grand right silo, the music is serving
a narrative. It's, you know, interacting with
characters, advancing a plot, or carrying the
emotional weight of a theatrical story. Right,
it's doing work. Exactly. When music becomes
a storytelling device, the legal mechanism to
access it changes entirely. You can't just pay
a blanket fee. You have to bypass the PROs entirely
and negotiate directly with the copyright holder
or the publisher. So, if small rights are the
all -you -can -eat buffet, grand rights are like
hiring a private exclusive s***. I like that
you can't just pay a flat door fee you have to
track the chef down pitch them the specific menu
you want for your specific dinner party and Negotiate
the price directly based on what you're asking
them to cook right and Importantly the chef has
the absolute right to look at your dinner party
plans and say no. I don't want my food served
there Wow The copyright holder retains total
veto power. OK, I want to push back on a specific
detail here, because the line between non -dramatic
and dramatic seems, frankly, incredibly blurry
in practice. It definitely can be. Like, the
source explicitly states that grand rights include
arrangements of music from a dramatic work. So
let's go back to our jazz band in the coffee
shop. OK, the jazz band. They're just playing
instruments. They aren't wearing costumes. They
aren't acting out a scene. If they play an instrumental
jazz arrangement of a song that was originally
written for a famous Broadway musical, why does
the origin of the song matter? That's a great
question. Like, why isn't that just a standard
small right from the buffet? Because the DNA
of that composition is inherently theatrical.
The PRO license agreements actively exclude the
use of compositions that originated from a...
dramatic or musical work. Really? Just because
of where it came from? Yes. The reasoning comes
down to brand dilution and narrative integrity.
When a composer writes a song for a musical,
that song is essentially a character in the play.
It holds a specific narrative weight. Oh, I see.
So even if the jazz trio isn't acting it out,
the song itself carries the ghost of the theater
with it. Beautifully put, the copyright holder
wants to tightly control how that theatrical
property travels through the world. I mean, if
anyone could just pull a Broadway showstopper
from the ASCAP buffet and rearrange it however
they wanted, it could dilute the value of the
original stage production. That makes sense.
The firewall ensures that the original dramatic
intent of the work isn't morphed or commodified
without the direct, explicit consent of the person
who created it. I mean, I get that. I understand
wanting to protect the art. But the sheer logistics
of this sound like a nightmare. Oh, it's incredibly
complex. If the PRO buffet model is working so
beautifully for the entire radio and retail industry,
why force the theater and dance worlds to go
back to the dark ages of tracking down individual
publishers? Wow. Like, think about a community
theater trying to put on a local cabaret. Having
to hunt down individual rights holders for 20
different songs and negotiate bespoke contracts
seems punishingly. It is inefficient. Why on
earth wouldn't the industry want the exact same
efficiency for the stage that they have for the
radio? Right, so if we connect this to the bigger
picture, we have to look at the historical evolution
of music licensing. The tension you're pointing
out between the efficiency of a system and the
control of the artist that is the defining struggle
of copyright history. Okay. Before the PROs even
existed, before ASCAP or BMI, Every single use
of a composition required a direct negotiation.
Wait, really? 100 years ago, the private chef
model was the only model. The only model. Yeah.
Whether you were staging a massive opera in New
York or just playing a new tune in a small tavern,
the legal expectation was that you got direct
permission from the publisher. That sounds exhausting.
It was, but then... technology exploded. We saw
the rise of the phonograph, and more importantly,
the birth of radio broadcasting. Oh right, radio.
Suddenly recorded music was everywhere. Radio
stations were spinning dozens of records a day,
365 days a year. And the math completely breaks
down. I mean, you physically cannot have a radio
station manager calling up a thousand different
publishers every single week to negotiate the
right to play a three -minute song. Exactly.
The entire broadcasting industry would choke
on its own paperwork. The shift to collective
management, you know, the creation of PROs was
born out of absolute unavoidable necessity. The
volume of non -dramatic uses became so impossibly
large that the industry had to create a utility.
A utility, yeah. They centralized the rights
to make the sheer scale of modern music consumption
possible. It was a compromise. Composers gave
up their right to directly negotiate every single
radio play in exchange for a system that could
actually collect their pennies at scale. Okay,
that makes perfect sense for radio, but it brings
me right back to my question. If Broadway publishers
saw how beautifully efficient this utility was,
why didn't they join in? Are publishers just
being stubborn? Like, are they clinging to an
old, slower system purely out of tradition? We
actually find the answer to that in the psychology
of the creators themselves. The source material
features a really illuminating perspective from
a musician named Jack Vease. Okay, what does
he say? He cuts right through the romanticism
of copyright and points out the raw business
pragmatism at play. He argues that it is entirely
understandable that a successful composer or
publisher would not want to hand over control
of negotiating rights if they are already doing
exceptionally well in that specific arena. So
it's about protecting the golden goose. Exactly.
If you write a smash hit Broadway musical, you
have created a highly lucrative, highly specialized
asset. Right. You don't want to toss your golden
goose into the giant P .R .O. buffet where your
revenue gets averaged out and you have to to
share the collective pool with someone who wrote
a 30 -second jingle for a local car dealership.
That economic reality drives the entire structure.
And Vease introduces a very specific word to
describe this dynamic. What word? He calls the
division of labor between small and grand rights
a conscious decision made by the members of a
performing rights society. He says they set these
rules because that's the way they wanted their
particular club to work. A club. Oh, here's where
it gets really interesting. It does, doesn't
it? The word club completely shatters the usual
framing of these organizations. We are constantly
told that copyright organizations are these noble,
neutral protectors of the starving artist, ensuring
that music creators get their fair share. Right,
the noble defenders. But Weez characterizes them
as a private club deciding its own rules. I mean,
it makes the PROs sound less like neutral public
utilities and more like a society setting arbitrary
boundaries just to protect the heavy hitters
at the very top. Yeah, it strips away illusion
that copyright structures are purely objective
laws of nature. They aren't. They are negotiated
agreements made by people with vested financial
interests. The PROs are made up of members, and
the members who hold the rights to the most lucrative
dramatic works recognize very early on that a
dramatic integration is inherently more valuable
than a background spin on the radio. When music
carries the emotional climax of a theatrical
scene, its financial value skyrockets. The creators
of that value simply voted to keep the rights
to that amplified value for themselves rather
than pooling it. But surely it isn't just a matter
of a private club wanting to hoard its wealth.
Like a group of powerful people getting together
in a room and agreeing not to participate in
a broader market sounds like it edges into some
very dangerous legal territory. It absolutely
does. And this brings us to Jack Vease's second
much more severe argument. The separation of
grand rights isn't just about publisher preference.
It is a structural defense against the law. How
so? Well, Vease argues that allowing PROs to
engage in negotiations for the use of compositions
in dramatic works could actively encourage illegal
price fixing. Price fixing. Wait, that is a massive
accusation to throw at the structure of music
licensing. It's a huge claim. I need to understand
the mechanics here. PROs already hold the keys
to millions of songs. They already walk into
a coffee shop and say, pay this exact standardized
rate for our blanket license or we will sue you
for infringement. How is that not already price
fixing? Why is putting grand rights into that
exact same bucket the specific thing that crosses
the legal tripwire? This raises an important
question. To understand the legal distinction,
we have to look at the difference between standardizing
a basic commodity versus standardizing a bespoke
service. Okay. Think of small rights like the
price of electricity. It makes economic sense
for the government to allow a regulated standardized
rate for the raw juice that keeps the lights
on in the coffee shop. Sure. The music in a non
-dramatic context is created as a high -volume
commodity. The government allows PROs to consolidate
power for small rights because the public benefit
of having music on the radio outweighs the risk
of the monopoly. Right. The sheer volume demands
the efficiency like we talked about earlier.
Exactly. But grand rights are not a commodity.
Using music in a dramatic work is like hiring
an architect to design a custom building. Oh,
I see. Every stage production is unique. The
way the music interacts with the script, the
staging, and the audience, it's a highly bespoke
creative integration. OK, I see where this is
going. If all the architects in the country formed
one single organization, refused to let you negotiate
with them individually, and dictated one massive,
non -negotiable flat fee for any building design.
The government would immediately interview and
dismantle it as an illegal cartel. Exactly. Because
they would completely eliminate the free market
for architecture. Wow. And exactly the same principle
applies to theater. Dramatic integrations are
high stakes. custom, and relatively low volume
compared to radio plays. Right. If a massive
centralized organization like ASCOP were allowed
to dictate standard prices for custom dramatic
integrations, they could effectively hold the
entire theatrical industry hostage. They control
everything. They can monopolize the market for
stage productions. So by keeping grand rights
out of the PROs, the industry ensures a free
market where the price of a dramatic musical
performance is determined by individual direct
bargaining, not a centralized monopoly. So the
firewall isn't just a quirk of history. It is
a necessary legal barrier to prevent a single
organization from having absolute unchecked power
over the creation of new dramatic art. You've
got it. Standardizing the price of a bespoke
artistic integration removes all market competition.
The creator loses their leverage and the producer
loses their ability to negotiate based on the
specific scale and budget of their show. You
know, think about the real -world implications
of this the next time you pay for a ticket to
a musical or a modern dance performance or even
like drop a few dollars in a bucket to see a
local high school play. Yeah, it changes your
whole perspective. Part of the cost of that ticket,
the availability of that show in your town and
the fact that if the production exists at all,
is a direct result of this invisible firewall.
Absolutely. The creators of that show had to
bypass the easy buffet. They had to navigate
the grand rights system, find the private chef,
and negotiate a bespoke contract. The budget
of the show was shaped by that direct negotiation.
So the performance happening in front of you
is a testament to someone successfully navigating
a system designed to protect against monopolies
while ensuring original composers get their custom
payday. It completely reframes the experience
of live performance, doesn't it? You are not
just sitting in the dark witnessing artistic
expression. You are witnessing the end result
of a highly specific, legally mandated economic
negotiation playing out in real time. It really
is wild. So what does this all mean for us? We
started by decoding the three silos of music
licensing, right? The high volume buffet of small
rights handled by the PROs, the permanent video
pairing of sync rights, and the highly bespoke,
strictly guarded world of grand rights. Right.
We explored the history, seeing how the explosion
of radio and recorded music forced the creation
of collective management, simply to handle the
impossible math of non -dramatic consumption.
And we also unpacked the pragmatic reality of
the industry through Jack V's concept of the
club. We saw how successful artists fiercely
guard the direct control of their most lucrative,
dramatically integrated works because they truly
understand the amplified value of narrative context.
And finally, we looked at the massive legal guardrails
holding the whole system in place. We learned
that this fragmented, seemingly inefficient system
for theaters isn't just about publishers being
stubborn. Not at all. It is a structural necessity
to prevent illegal price -fixing and monopolies
in the high -stakes custom world of the dramatic
arts. You know, looking at this history leads
us with a really fascinating tension regarding
the future. Oh, how so? Well, the entire justification
for the PROs. The reason the buffet was created
in the first place was because the sheer volume
of non -dramatic radio play made direct negotiation
physically impossible. Right. The technology
outpaced the old system. But look at the technology
we have today. We are living in an era of unprecedented
user -generated content. Oh, wow. Yeah. Digital
platforms are allowing millions of creators to
adapt music for highly contextual, dramatic narrative
works at lightning speed. People are essentially
creating mini musicals and dramatic interpretations
on their phones every single day. That is a staggering
amount of volume, like way more than early radio.
Exactly. So if the volume of dramatic narrative
music use online begins to mirror the volume
of radio play a century ago, the math is going
to break all over again. Mind blown. The question
becomes... Will the bespoke direct negotiation
club rules of grand rights eventually buckle
under the massive relentless pressure of digital
scale? The technology might force the law to
evolve all over again, just like it did 100 years
ago. That is incredibly thought provoking. It
is definitely something to keep an eye on. For
sure. Well, thank you for joining us on this
deep dive. The next time you find yourself sitting
in a theater as the lights go down and the orchestra
strikes up that first chord, I hope you listen
closely. Me too. Because behind every soaring
melody, there is a very quiet, very powerful
legal architecture that dictates exactly what
you are allowed to hear. Catch you next time.