Writing a Play

lilmissprincess

Hi,

I'm currently in the middle of writing a play which i hope to give to our Youth theatre director to produce next year.
However, the way i have it written, background music comes up in a lot of the scenes, especially a dance scene.
Do i have to get the rights to these songs to use them or what?

LMP

brightspark

Hi LMP

As the person now responsible for music and sound effects within an amateur group I have just started to look into this.

There appear to be two organisations collecting fees (and both say that you may have to pay the other one also)

The PHONOGRAPHIC PERFORMANCE IRELAND

http://www.ppiltd.com/index2.htm

they collect fees for using recorded music.

Tariff no. 44 (for amateur groups) on this page:

http://www.ppiltd.com/tariffs.htm#tar1

at €35.88 a year it isn't too bad, but perhaps one of the other tariffs is more appropriate to your circumstances.

The other organisation is IMRO

http://www.imro.ie

they collect fees for both live and recorded performances of copyrighted works in public places

I haven't been able to find any prices online for IMRO so you will probably have to contact them.

I would think that its the responsibility of the Youth Theatre who have to pay not yourself as writer, a lot of scripts that I have read that include music in the directions normally have a statement in the copyright notice that the performance rights for the play do not include the performance rights for the music

Hope this helps.

Brightspark