[David_Gardiner]

This is an idea borrowed from the world of IT code writing. I have been trying to find a collaborator to help me create a stage musical by turning my lyrics into songs. I'm having trouble finding someone for two reasons, I think: 1. It's a big commitment. There are a lot of song lyrics needing melodies and arrangements. 2. It's quite complicated and difficult to co-own a musical and all the songs it contains in the copyright sense. Individual songs can be registered as collaborations at PRS for music but not the play itself. That would need to be registered separately if we were trying to charge performing rights. In fact I'm not interested in looking for performing rights, so I would be quite happy to forget about that and just make my script 'open source'. Put it up on my website complete with all song lyrics and let anyone who wanted to have a go write the music for an individual song which we could then register as a collaboration. Even that might not be worth doing since as far as I can understand the legislation no royalties are payable for the public performance of a song, only if someone were to record it and sell the recording in some way. In fact the financial aspect is just a bore to me, my interest is simply in getting the project completed and finding a company willing to put it on, which will almost certainly be an amateur or student group, and my reward will be in seeing it performed and an audience (hopefully) enjoying it.

I have no experience in this field so I would like to hear people's views on whether or not I could collaborate with a number of people in this way.

[tone]

Hi David

I don't know anything about musicals, but I know a little about PRS and royalties. Having a recording of your song and having it played on TV/ radio/ in a shop/ club/ whatever is one way of generating royalties, but not the only way. Anyone can write a song, perform it in a venue and collect a royalty for doing so.

I hope that doesn't only confuse matters further.

[David_Gardiner]

You mean if the person who wrote the song performs it? I don't know what would apply to that case, but if (for example) I sing a song on stage that I didn't write, let's say it's Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, from what I can understand from PRS I don't owe Leonard any royalties. That would be the situation if there was a production of a song from my musical or the entire musical. I wouldn't be owed any royalties for the songs, only performing rights for the play itself, which has nothing to do with PRS. Have I understood that correctly?

[Bernd]

> no royalties are payable for the public performance of a song, <

that's wrong, of course royalties are paid for each public performance.

But it's got nothing much to do with your original question. You can waive your rights by stating this clearly in context with your lyrics. You can either assign them to the public domain - so everybody can do anything with them. Or you can specify what exactly you intend. That's not called 'open source' but 'creative commons license' (a concept that's actually based on the open source idea). For example you could exclude commercial usage - which in your case might actually also exclude public performances. You see, it's not THAT easy.

I make my lyrics available for non-commercial use by specifying creative common licenses. The license model that I assign is 'CC BY-NC-SA' (by=give credits; nc=only non-commercial use; sa=share your creation in the same manner if you alter anything). I claim royalties for public performances of songs that use my lyrics, though (because they are considered commercial even if there is no entrance fee to the concerts). Mind you, it's just peanuts ($500 or 600 per year). But why should I deny myself my proper share (that is collected anyway). The PROs collect and distribute the royalties.

Good luck!
Bernd

[David_Gardiner]

You're quite right, I misunderstood what I was told about royalties for live performances of songs. It's actually songs that form part of a musical theatre production that don't attract royalties. It's covered by Section 32. Is there any music which isn’t covered by a licence from PRS for Music? of the PRS licencing arrangements:

•Music which is specially written for dramatic performances, such as musicals, operas and ballets (also known as Grand Right works). To use this music, you need to get permission from the rights holder directly, which is usually the music publisher.

So if I work with a collaborator and he or she writes music to go with my lyrics we can simply copyright the work as a whole in the same way as we would a co-authored book, that is by 'asserting our right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be recognised as the authors of this work', and backing it up in the time-honoured manner by sending sealed copies of the script to ourselves by Registered Post. We could then grant permission for individual performances, either free of charge for amateur and student groups or by means of a contract for professional commercial productions. We could also register the individual songs with PRS as collaborations so that we would receive royalties for any performances outside of full stage presentations of the play.

Again unless I've misunderstood, that would seem to be simplest way of protecting both people's rights in a two-way collaboration like this.