I have a confession. I’m a Gleek.
Every Tuesday, I get progressively excited throughout the day to watch Glee and find out what songs will be featured on the week’s episode. It’s disgusting, I know. I even like some of the show tunes. Only some.
Anyway, I’ve always been interested in how a show pulls off that much creative license with so much intellectual property, so I decided to get the skinny.
Intellectual property licensing has always been interesting to me because there are so many moving parts. When it comes to music, there are rights to the audio, rights to the words, rights to synchronize the music and words to video, and any number of other combinations. Then, there are situations where parts of the property will be recreated, like Glee does with songs.
Advertisers and broadcasters have quite a few hoops to jump through, which brings a whole new issue to light. Is it worth it?
After the nasty little bout in the early 2000’s when everyone (except me, of course) was downloading pirated music left-and-right, and the Limewires of the world could get you anything you wanted before it even came out, artists tightened their grips on the rights to their content. This means they finally had a say in when and where their music was played, and that led to concerns about what their music was associated with.
Fortunately for mass media, the slow, painful death of albums at the hand of iTunes left artists relying on broadcast licensing for much of their lavish livelihood. And there was much rejoicing. When it comes to Glee, however, some artists have been too concerned with the show’s image to allow their music to be featured.
In the beginning, artists weren’t sure about the premise of the show – a high school glee club full of misfits, social outcasts of the teenage dream. Once the show gained popularity though, other artists refused to touch it because Glee’s versions of songs often surpassed the originals on the download charts.
Still, some of us would’ve never remembered Beck’s Loser or ever heard lesser-known Hey Monday’s Candles without the help of the show. With through-the-roof viewership, it’s undeniable that there are benefits to many artists who allow the show to assume some creative license with their content.
In addition, artists who have openly denied the show licensing rights have experienced ridicule from the public. Many believe that the show promotes positive messages and may encourage students, especially those who feel they don’t fit in, to take up music as a form of expression. To those people, denying Glee the rights to music is a direct slight to children.
Maybe it’s a little dramatic, but it happens, nonetheless.
In short, the process to secure licensing rights for each song on the show is not easy. Between the synchronization licensing, which is individually negotiable from song to song, and just trying to convince some of the more conservative artists to relinquish control of their precious music, the production team has a lot on its plate.
Fortunately for us, they’re good enough to pull off the entire recreation of a Madonna video, so you can expect the hits to continue playing for seasons to come.