Broadway Musicals and Music Publishing

Published on June 10, 2009 by eteachers.info in Performing Arts

Between the success of Broadway shows in the past using a collection of popular music and the current trends of utilizing pop of past and present, there are millions to be made in licensing. So what is the big mystery and how does it work?

Theatrical performances have several possible streams of income for the songwriter. Of course there is the immediate performance royalties but there are also rights to the soundtrack, touring productions, motion picture rights, video production, merchandising and duplicate performance rights for school and theater production. All of those provide outlets for additional income to stream to the songwriter through the publisher. But how does it work?

Forgetting the amount of blood, sweat and tears it would take to break into a deal for a musical, let’s talk about the inner workings of the deal as something to aspire to in the future. The outright rights to the music of a Broadway show are dealt to be between 1.5% and 4% of the box office. Therefore, if you are responsible for writing all the hits songs, you would make $250,000 to over $10,000,000 per year not considering how the money is then broken down further if done through your music publisher. But even at 50%, wouldn’t you take $5 million per year even if the publisher gets a $5 million dollar finding fee for getting you the deal in the first place?

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