Grand rights is a type of

music licensing Music licensing is the licensed use of copyrighted music. Music licensing is intended to ensure that the owners of copyrights on musical works are compensated for certain uses of their work. A purchaser has limited rights to use the work without ...

, specifically covering the right to perform musical compositions within the context of a dramatic work. This includes stage performances such as

musical theater Musical theatre is a form of theatrical performance that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting and dance. The story and emotional content of a musical – humor, pathos, love, anger – are communicated through words, music, movement ...

concert dance Concert dance (also known as performance dance or theatre dance in the United Kingdom) is dance performed for an audience. It is frequently performed in a theatre setting, though this is not a requirement, and it is usually choreographed and p ...

, and arrangements of music from a dramatic work. The license agreements of major

Performance rights organisation A performance rights organisation (PRO), also known as a performing rights society, provides intermediary functions, particularly collection of royalties, between copyright holders and parties who wish to use copyrighted works ''publicly'' in loca ...

(PRO)s such as

ASCAP The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) () is an American not-for-profit performance-rights organization (PRO) that collectively licenses the public performance rights of its members' musical works to venues, broadca ...

and BMI only cover what are known in contrast as "small rights", and exclude the usage of compositions within "dramatic" or "dramatico-musical" works, or the use of compositions that originated from a dramatico-musical work. Unlike small rights, grand rights must be negotiated directly with the publisher or copyright holder of the composition. Grand rights may also be contrasted with

sync licensing A music synchronization license, or "sync" for short, is a music license granted by the holder of the copyright of a particular composition, allowing the licensee to synchronize ("sync") music with some kind of visual media output (film, televisi ...

, the licensing of music to synchronize with video content in films, videos, videogames, etc. Prior to the establishment of PROs, license negotiations for any use of a composition were always done directly with publishers or composers. As compositions are licensed more often for non-dramatic performances, it is more efficient to manage these uses collectively. Musician Jack Vees noted that

"it is understandable that a successful composer or publisher would not want to hand over control of negotiating rights if he or she is doing pretty well in that particular arena. In one sense, this division of labor is simply a decision made by a majority of the members of a given performing rights society, because that’s the way they wanted their particular club to work."

Vees also argued that allowing PROs to engage in negotiations for use of compositions in dramatic works could encourage illegal

price fixing Price fixing is an anticompetitive agreement between participants on the same side in a market to buy or sell a product, service, or commodity only at a fixed price, or maintain the market conditions such that the price is maintained at a given ...

References

Music licensing Copyright licenses Musical theatre {{law-stub