Ask John: Are Music Rights Separate in Anime Licensing?

Question:
I rencently saw your opening posts for Speed Grapher and Gunslinger Girl. Both Japanese openings had pop music songs as part of the opening. I much prefer “Girls on Film” for Speed Grapher and “The Light Before We Land” on Gunslinger Girl. I’m rather disappointed that they never made it on the domestic releases from Funimation. The question I’m posing is this. Are securing music licenses seperate and more expensive? Or rather, when securing the license for the anime, does it become more expensive if they included the rights to a pop song?

Answer:
Music use rights have long been a cause for consternation in animation licensing and distribution. Domestically, the 1981 film Heavy Metal was kept off home video for years due to convoluted music use approvals and contract disputes. MTV programs including Daria and Beavis & Butt-head have not reached home video with all of their original broadcast music intact due to rights issues and the simple cost prohibition. Anime including Speed Grapher & Gunslinger Girl lost their original opening themes upon their domestic release. Kodomo no Omocha lost its first opening theme. Eden of the East reached America with its original opening music only intact on the first episode. Cost prohibitive music rights is one of the primary frequently cited reasons that the Macross 7 anime series was never licensed for American release.

In typical licensing contracts, the cost of music rights is already calculated into the total cost of the acquisition. When a distributor acquires the rights to animation footage, the footage includes the audio track. However, such simplicity isn’t always the case. For example, Gonzo’s original license to use Duran Duran’s song “Girls on Film” was drafted for Japanese use only. Gonzo didn’t have the option of providing “Girls on Film” to a foreign licensor when it granted rights to distribute the Speed Grapher anime outside of Japan. So while sometimes contracts can be negotiated, sometimes the anime studio that produced a series or the Japanese distributor that owns the series does not, itself, have master rights to the music used within the anime. Theoretically, music rights, and the option to release an anime internationally with its original broadcast music intact, are always available and negotiable if the potential licensor is determined enough and wealthy enough. But with the American anime distribution industry as small as it is, typically extra and costly negotiations to acquire separate music rights on top of animation footage rights are just too time and money consuming to be worthwhile and viable.