Rental rights

What are rental rights?

In the music industry, rental rights are the rights to rent physical products incorporating musical works and sound recordings such as CDs, music videos, or vinyl records. Rental rights, derived from the right of rental, are economic rights protected by copyright law.

Nowadays, streaming is the prevalent mode of distributing sound recordings, and rental rights have a lesser importance in the music industry.

Explore our page on Rights in Musical Works and Rights in Performances and Sound Recordings for more.

Who owns rental rights?

Rental rights can be owned by and split between the songwriters and possibly music publishers of the musical works and the performers and owners of the sound recording.

Rental rights in most countries where they exist are remuneration rights managed by CMOs.

Visit our page on CMOs to learn more.

Image credit: Ann Kilpatrick