Copyright - LM licence

If you decide to have your CD professionally made, your chosen production company may agree to acquire a licence as part of their service.

A dramatcio-musical work is a theatrical show which has music specially written for it. This includes opera, musicals, ballet and some pantomimes and revues.

An LM licence does not cover dramatico-musical works. PRS for Music does not represent dramatico-musical rights holders so permission to record those pieces will need to be sought directly from the copyright owner. 

Find out more about dramatico-musical works. 

It doesn’t matter if you give the CDs away for free – you still need a license. 

LM licences are only available for a maximum of 1000 CDs. They can also be used only if you will be distributing your disc directly. If you require more than 1000 units or you plan to sell your disc through a third party, you will need an AP1 or AP2 licence. We don’t anticipate many of our groups needing one of these licences.

You need a LM licence if any of the music on your disc is in copyright. So if you make a CD of 10 tracks, 9 are out of copyright and 1 is in, then you need a licence. However, when calculating the licence fee only count the minutes for the music in copyright.

A LM licences applies to an album and cannot be transferred. So if you buy a LM licence for 250 copies for your Summer album and only make 150, you cannot use the spare 100 for your Christmas album, you would need a new licence.