Performance Rights vs Grand Rights: What's the Difference?

If you're staging a play, musical, or revue in Australia, the word "rights" gets thrown around constantly — performance rights, grand rights, mechanical rights, sync rights, small rights. They sound interchangeable. They are not. Securing the wrong one (or missing one entirely) can shut your season down a week before opening. Here's the producer-friendly breakdown, with practical guidance on what you actually need to clear before you sell a single ticket.

Performance rights (the one every show needs)

Performance rights — sometimes called stage rights or dramatic performance rights — give you permission to perform a written work in front of a live audience. For a straight play, this is almost always a single licence issued by the publisher, agent, or the playwright's estate. The licence specifies the dates, venue, capacity, territory and whether the production is amateur or professional. Without it, the rights-holder can issue a take-down at any time, and your venue insurance will often refuse to cover a show that doesn't have rights in writing.

Grand rights (the one most schools and amateur companies miss)

Grand rights are the right to perform a piece of music inside a dramatic context — a musical, an opera, a revue, or any production where the song advances a plot or character. Crucially, grand rights are not covered by APRA AMCOS. They are negotiated directly with the rights-holder and are usually bundled into your overall licence when you license a musical. If you want to drop a Top-40 song into a school review, that's a separate grand-rights conversation with the publisher of the song — and many will not licence it for stage use at all.

Small rights (the one your venue probably handles)

Small rights cover the non-dramatic public performance of music — pre-show music, foyer music, interval music, post-show curtain-call playlists. These are administered in Australia by APRA AMCOS through a venue licence. If you're hiring a council theatre or commercial venue, ask whether their APRA AMCOS licence is current. If you're staging in a hired warehouse or church hall, the producer is usually the one who needs to take out a one-off APRA AMCOS event licence.

Mechanical and synchronisation rights (the ones that bite recorded content)

Mechanical rights cover the physical or digital reproduction of a recording — burning a cast album to CD, releasing it on Spotify, or selling MP3 souvenirs. Synchronisation ("sync") rights cover pairing music with moving image — a promotional trailer, a livestream of your show, a behind-the-scenes documentary. Both sit completely outside your stage licence. If you intend to record or film any part of the production, even for archival use, clear sync and mechanical rights separately before the camera turns on.

Quick checklist before opening night

• Performance rights — issued and paid for
• Grand rights — confirmed bundled (for musicals) or separately cleared
• APRA AMCOS — venue licence current, or one-off event licence taken out
• Sync rights — only if you're filming
• Mechanical rights — only if you're recording or distributing audio

Independent Theatre Licensing handles performance rights and grand rights in a single licence and contract. APRA, sync and mechanical rights still sit with their own administrators — but the licence we issue tells you, in plain English, exactly which of them apply to your production.