Public Performance Rights

Broadcasting and Exhibition Royalties

Public Performance Rights (PPR), often referred to as performing rights, are a crucial component of music copyright law. They grant the creator of a musical composition—the songwriter(s) and their publisher—the exclusive right to perform their work publicly and to authorize others to do so. A “public performance” is legally defined in a very broad sense and occurs whenever music is played in a public space or transmitted to the public. For the film industry, this right is triggered every time a film is screened in a cinema, broadcast on television, or made available on a streaming service.

These rights are distinct from the rights of reproduction and distribution, which are covered by the Sync License and Master Use License. Those licenses allow a song to be recorded onto the film’s soundtrack and for that film to be distributed. The public performance right, however, generates a separate stream of income—performance royalties—that compensates the creators for the ongoing value their music provides during the film’s exhibition life.

How Royalties Are Collected and Paid

Managing these rights on a global scale is a monumental task, handled almost exclusively by a network of Performing Rights Organizations (PROs). These organizations, such as ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC in the United States, act as intermediaries between copyright holders and music users.

The process works as follows:

• Affiliation: Songwriters and publishers register their catalog of songs with a PRO.
• Licensing: The PROs issue licenses to businesses that perform music publicly. The most common type is a “blanket license,” which allows the venue or service (e.g., a movie theater chain, a TV network, a streaming platform) to use any song in the PRO’s entire repertoire for an annual fee. This fee is calculated based on factors like the venue’s size or the broadcaster’s revenue.
• Tracking: PROs use a combination of census data, surveys, and digital tracking technology (especially for streaming and broadcasting) to determine which songs are being performed and how frequently.
• Distribution: The PROs collect all the license fees, deduct their administrative costs, and then distribute the remaining money as royalties to the songwriters and publishers whose works were performed. The payment is proportional to the frequency and type of use.

The Filmmaker’s Obligation

Typically, the filmmaker or production company is not directly responsible for paying public performance royalties. Their primary music licensing duties are to secure the sync and master use licenses needed to create the film. The responsibility for securing performance licenses and paying royalties shifts to the exhibitor—the entity presenting the film to the public. For example, the AMC movie theater chain holds blanket licenses with PROs to cover all the music in the films they show. Netflix negotiates massive, multi-million dollar deals with PROs to cover the performance rights for its entire streaming library. This system ensures that creators are compensated for the entire life of their work’s use in a film, from the initial sync fee to the ongoing performance royalties generated with every single public screening.