Music rights and licensing

Education and training are established parts of the TV business, but some aspects of the production process are still underrepresented on courses. Music rights is a classic example: with the growth of platforms and a plethora of distribution deals, getting the right music for dramas and documentaries is becoming ever more complicated.

Music-based entertainment, meanwhile, is stretching beyond the big beasts of The X Factor and The Voice UK: multiple songs need to be cleared for use on newer formats such as Sky 1’s performance-based panel show Bring The Noise and Channel 5’s upcoming version of US entertainment hit Lip Sync Battle.

Frances Hodgson, head of evolution, skills and training at rights and licensing consultant Footprint Music, says everyone in the production team should have some knowledge of licensing commercial, composed and production music. “There’s so much information to take in, its difficult for one person to be abreast of it all.”

She says knowing how to handle rights is important but not many people are teaching or discussing the subject.

Rapid change
Footprint Music, which offers both production and commissioned tracks for use in TV and commercials, has been working with production music service Audio Network on a series of panels aimed at keeping people up to date with a rapidly changing area.

Back in 2001, Audio Network brought about a major change in how library music was licensed by clearing its own catalogue for multiple platforms in perpetuity rather than going through PRS for Music, which traditionally collect fees for writers and publishers.

Audio Network director of publishing Simon Anderson says the aim of the panels is to talk to producers and musicians alike to “clear up a lot of the confusion around rights”.

There might be suspicion about two music providers doing this, but the companies insist that the events are more about imparting information than self-promotion.

“It’s not a hard sell,” says Anderson. “We offer three options: composed, commercial and production music. We highlight the pros and cons and approximate costs of each, and detail what needs to be cleared.”

Rights management and entertainment business specialist Rogo Scott is aiming to work with educational establishments to create more formal courses in music copyright for the TV industry. Managing director Ben Clasper and James Wilkinson, general manager of the recently launched production music library Rogo Scott Music, carried out research over the summer to gauge interest in more structured training.

“We found that music is the number one barrier to broadcast,” Clasper says. “People are asking if there is life outside the first run of a programme, and usually there is, but they haven’t got the rights to the music for anything else. It’s something they need to know if they want to reversion a show.”

Clasper found that some film schools, while not deliberately ignoring the topic, were not actively educating students in music licensing. His aim is to provide training for both production crews and composers to raise the value of music at a time when, due to digital downloads, there is an increasing perception that music is free.

Clasper and Wilkinson have been talking to “educational institutions and media professionals”, as well as composers, about establishing new courses that take a different approach from the few that already exist.

“When I started in media, there were only four degree courses for it,” Clasper says. “They are still skewed towards the academic rather than the practical. Media has the worst ratio of graduates that end up in the industry – about 50% fewer than other areas. We want to find people who don’t want to be directors, writers or stars and provide better educational training in how the industry works and how to get into music licensing.”

Clasper hopes to have something in place with an educational establishment “by the end of the year”, and says everyone he has spoken to has been open to the idea.

“It has been hard to convince people of our intentions because we do have a commercial heart, but the first conversation I had with James was about education, not revenue.”

Gary Hilton, co-founder of newly opened music composition studio GAS Music, agrees that there is not enough education in music rights. “People can have an idea of what music they want, but they’re not always aware of the licensing connected to it,” he says. Hilton gives the example of a production that had selected a piece of orchestral music for a Christmas advert. Two weeks after it was finished, it was revealed that usage would cost £28,000, which was beyond the budget.

GAS Music, based at The Landing within MediaCityUK, has its own studio where Hilton and co-founder Steve Southern can work with clients on “bespoke” tracks for commercials as well as TV productions. “There should be a proper level of engagement, sitting down with the client as soon as possible,” he says. “It’s good business sense.”

PPL (Phonographic Performance Limited) licenses commercial music on behalf of record companies and performers. Chief licensing officer Jez Bell says there is a two-way exchange with clients, instructing them on how to use commercial tracks. “There is an education process with the broadcasters,” he says. “We have a one-to-one relationship, backed up by information on our website.”

Licensing seminars
PRS for Music holds licensing seminars in collaboration with the Production Managers Association (PMA). The most recent was in London last month, with a further three planned for next year in Glasgow (February), Bristol (May) and Manchester (July). Simon James, production music manager with PRS for Music, says that freelance production managers work on different shows for different broadcasters and indies from week to week, where different licensing rules often apply.

“They’re already a well-informed audience but there are gaps in their knowledge and there are changing situations with new broadcast arrangements coming in 2016, such as Channel 5’s return to the PRS model, and the growth of digital platforms, including the imminent move of BBC3 to online,” James says. “It is an evolving landscape.”

Among the established music rights courses are those run by the National Film and Television School (NFTS). These include modules for students taking the production management diploma and the two-year MA composing course. There are also sessions on licensing included in the creative business for entrepreneurs and executives diploma.

The producers’, composers’ and production managers’ rights lessons are taken by visiting tutor Julian Hamlin, who describes himself as a “jobbing composer” specialising in factual productions. Hamlin agrees that music is often taken for granted, with its true value not fully appreciated or recognised. “I was working on a project recently where the editor was dropping in tracks taken from the internet, with no realisation that he couldn’t do that,” he says. “The value of music is fundamental, but there is now the thought that it is free.”

Copyright is covered in the NFTS courses for both composers and producer/ directors, he says, but the emphasis is slightly different. “We say to composers that if you don’t talk about this, a broadcaster could take your publishing, which could mean half your royalties. Production managers need to recognise that if something is taken for publishing then it can’t be used again.”

The consensus is that while production people should know about music rights, they don’t have to know everything; there are specialist lawyers and experts at TV channel music departments who can be contacted for detailed information.

“You just need the fundamentals, such as the difference between the publishing and the recording,” says Hamlin. “But you have to know what to ask. Things have changed an awful lot but there are plenty of avenues to go down. There really is no excuse.”