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Copyright and Grand Performance Rights

Copyright can be complex and difficult to understand. It is a great burden to us church musicians, both to understand our rights and responsibilities as well as to do the right thing, remain legal, and keep ourselves and our congregations from embarrassment and penalty.

Copyright literally means the RIGHT to COPY a work, to EXPLOIT the work, and to CONTROL all rights to the work. The law gives this right exclusively and completely to the owner of the copyright. The law grants five exclusive specific rights to the copyright owner: (1) reproduction, (2) display, (3) derivative, (4) distribution, and (5) performance.

This article is about only one of the performance rights called Grand Rights, Dramatic Rights, or Grand Performance Rights. Grand Rights is a broad and inclusive category of performance rights that directly has an impact on local churches and musicians. The Grand Rights category of copyright includes those performances related to drama, including:

  • Using a musical work to tell a story, or as part of a story or plot.
  • An entire "dramatico-musical work," such as Oklahoma or a musical or major work for church.
  • One or more musical compositions from such a "dramatico-musical work," accompanied by any of dialogue, pantomime, dance, stage action, props, costumes.
  • Performance of a work that includes any combination of dance, physical interpretation, or any kind of drama with copyrighted music in the church or as part of a worship service.
  • One or more musical compositions as above as part of a story or plot, even without dialogue, pantomime, dance, stage action, costumes, props, or visual representation.
  • The performance or presentation of a concert version of a "dramatico-musical work" without costumes, sets, and so on.
  • The term "dramatico-musical work" includes, but is not limited to, a musical comedy, oratorio, choral work, opera, play with music, revue, or ballet.

What are the most important implications or requirements of Grand Rights for churches?

  • Musicals, Concerts, Cantatas: These are the most frequently presented "dramatico-musical works" for churches. Unless there is a clear and unequivocal permission statement from the copyright holder giving permission to present and perform the work printed in the work as published, the church must obtain Grand Rights permission before presenting the musical work, with or without staging, costumes, props, dialogue, drama, and so on. Grand Rights permission is required whether or not you will charge admission, sell tickets, take an offering, or not. Grand Rights permission is required whether you purchase legal copies or not, whether the work is presented in worship or concert, and whether or not you have a music license such as CCLI or OneLicense.net.
  • Drama, Story: Use of copyrighted music as part of or accompaniment to the dramatic telling of a story, such as a play, the Easter or Christmas story, a children's Sunday School or youth program, in worship or concert, requires Grand Rights permission.
  • Dance: Use of copyrighted music when any added elements of dance, interpretive movement, hand motions, with or without costumes, props, dialog, and so on, in worship or in concert, with or without offerings, ticket sales, or donations, requires Grand Rights permission.

There are no exceptions to these requirements of Grand Rights, even for churches and worship. There is no license available that covers Grand Rights. They must always be negotiated with the music copyright owner.

Does that seem harsh? Unreasonable? Particularly unfriendly to churches and ministry? To church musicians wanting to do a children's Christmas play, to church dancers who want to dance when the choir sings its anthem, and to music and choir directors who want to abide by the law, the answer may be yes. But that is the copyright law, and it does not exist for our benefit. It exists solely for the benefit, financial and otherwise, of the copyright owner.

Other information and articles on copyright and licensing for church musicians are available on the Discipleship Ministries website under "Copyright & Licensing."

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