Eighteen high profile British songwriters - including Elton John, Paul McCartney and Thom Yorke - have written to UK collecting society PRS questioning the administrative costs incurred by the rights organisation, which are deducted from money it collects on behalf of its songwriter and music publisher members.
According to Bloomberg, which has seen the letter, the writers request information about the society’s running costs, while also expressing concerns about “transparency, accuracy and overall representation of members’ interests”. It’s important for future songwriters that PRS establishes “clear and fair methodologies” for distributing income, the letter adds, because “their livelihoods will depend on it”.
The letter follows the recent dismissal of a class action lawsuit filed by Blur drummer Dave Rowntree, which claimed that the way PRS distributes unallocated, or ‘black box’, income constitutes unfair trading.
Judges considering that case expressed various concerns about the litigation, particularly the legal costs that would be incurred, and ultimately granted PRS’s bid to strike out the action, adding that the dispute would be better pursued via the collecting society’s own internal systems.
Commenting on the new songwriter letter, a PRS spokesperson stressed that the society is member owned and the interests of those members “are at the heart of everything we do”. The letter, the spokesperson added, “highlights the challenges of collecting data from hundreds of thousands of businesses and matching against millions of individual works to accurately pay royalties”.
“Our teams and committees, led by elected members, are constantly reviewing and improving our policies and processes, embracing new technologies, to deliver accurate, timely royalties”, they went on, before revealing “we have met with representatives of these members and will continue to explore all practical changes which can achieve our shared goal, supporting the songwriter and composer community”.
PRS controls the performing rights of its members’ songs, and issues licences in most scenarios when those performing rights are exploited, which includes live music, background music, TV and radio, and - albeit in a slightly more complicated way - downloads and streaming.
Collecting societies usually issue blanket licences covering all their members’ works, and then need to pass any money they receive from licensees onto the relevant songwriters and music publishers based on what music was performed, broadcast or streamed.
That requires knowing what music has been used, what songs are contained in any one recording, and which writers and publishers have an interest in any one work.
That’s a major undertaking, and quite how accurate any one collecting society’s distributions can be depends in no small part on what usage data the licensees can provide. Some licensees won’t provide much or any usage data, and societies have to decide how to distribute income from those users of music.
Quite how that happens, what rules are applied, how transparent the rules are, and what costs are incurred in managing all the data and payments, often causes controversy within the music community, and most collecting societies come in for criticism from their members at one point or another.
Although Rowntree’s lawsuit against PRS was dismissed, another separate lawsuit filed by other songwriter members - including Robert Fripp and Jim and William Reid from The Jesus And Mary Chain - continues to proceed.
That legal action, which also involves licensing agency PACE Rights Management, specifically focuses on the licensing of live music. It claims PRS puts in place “unreasonable and unnecessary hurdles” when songwriters want to directly license their own live shows - rather than licensing their works under the PRS blanket licence - and also criticises the PRS Major Live Concerts Service.