Music Copyright and Glee

A TV series Glee is recently a hit around the world, the audiences love the Glee cover of the classic songs. No matter it was classic like Don’t Stop Believing or It’s My Life, or current hit Poker Face or My Life Would Suck Without You, audiences are all amazed by the singing ability of Glee cast. Some people even said that some Glee cover songs are far more better than the original ones.

I always held a same attitude that singing hit songs by Glee cast is beneficial to both the show itself and the audiences. First of all, audiences are already familiar with the classics, so they do not need a long time to find the echo with Glee. Second, the educational function is explicit, audiences can through this series learn something related to these songs.

However, when the issue of “copyright” and “intellectual property” has been aroused in a book I read recently, Glee has come up in my mind. Using classics abundantly, Glee must confront some issue with copyright.

The fact is, the producers spent a great amount of money in licensing. Dominic Patten wrote that “Madonna-themed episode of ‘Glee’ is going to leave the Material Girl very, very happy”. The reason of that surely is the producers have to pay Madonna for $50,000 per song for licensing fee. This kind of expense not only can not be avoided, but also has a trend to rise: “Licensing, like live performance, is one of the few areas of the music business that is still actually growing.” Including numerous “mash-ups”, the major amount of expense in Glee is obviously not in casting, but in paying licensing fee.

Christina Mulligan wrote on his article Copyright: The Elephant in the Middle of the Glee Club that the biggest problem in Glee was not about paying licensing fee, but in the portrayal of high school students using copyrighted songs in the series. She mentioned that Glee club sang classic song every week, if it was in a real life, they can totally unable to pay such expensive licensing fee. If they put the video on the Internet like the series, they need to pay 150,000 to 300,000 copyright fines. This was obvious not the ordinary high school students could afford. Mulligan believed that Glee apparently ignored copyright issue, she indicated: “the absence of any mention of copyright law in ‘Glee’ illustrates a painful tension in American culture”.

If it is just like what was mentioned above, teenagers can no longer share music or sing songs in public. However, according to copyright law, performing in class or organization without financial purpose does not infringe copyright law, unless the audiences are invited. In the series, most of the performances the student did are rehearsals in classroom, only a few of the performances are in public. Furthermore, if the audiences are less than a certain number, copyright issue can actually be ignored, because there has no financial purpose. But if the show is aired by TV, licensing fee is inevitable.

Back to the series, although Glee has a pay a large amount of money in copyright, the profit later on is abundant. According to a report in Advertising Age, Glee, till February, 2010, has created 420,000 downloads and two golden albums.

We have to agree that in the issue between licensing fee and profits, Glee is doing very well. Although purchasing large number of songs, the show can earn them back in a short period of time, which includes CDs, live performance and other related products. Furthermore, comparing to other series, Glee cast sing all the songs, so they do not need to pay the performance fee, which save the produce team a lot of money.

Besides, with the development of technology and music industry, copyright holders are difficult to get all the legal money from Glee. Those Glee video clips which are protected by copyright have owned over millions clicks, which like Patrik Wikstrom said in The Music Industry: Digital Media and Society Series: “In the new music economy, it is still important to know how one’s intellectual property is used by the audience but it is more or less impossible to regulate and police that use.” Although recording firms are happy with such wide music dissemination, the process is hardly to control. In fact, the so-called “illegal promotion” created more and more listeners, which means more and more people are likely to purchase related products and tickets for tours, and this no doubt increased to potential profits of recording industry. Copyright holders should actually appreciate Glee for the promotion, no wonder there has people believe copyright holders should reduce licensing fees, because these show serve as a promotional function in an implicit way.