Recording royalty collection society PPL release their annual report this week and have confirmed that, if you put their figures alongside those of their sister organisation VPL, recording royalties earned last year were just short of £100 million, which is great news; well, it is if you own a recording copyright. If you're a grass roots radio company struggling to get your web station off the ground because PPL won't offer you a viable licensing deal, you might find it slightly annoying news, but let's not spoil things by bringing that up on this happy day.
PPL's income for 2005 was £86.5 million, which goes up to £99.3 million when you add in VPL's video royalty income. Broadcast income remained the biggest, at £50 million, though public performance revenues also rose, up 4.6% to £33.6 million.
PPL boss Fran Nevrkla told CMU: "This is a tremendous set of results for our record company members and performers. At the end of the day, our key obligation to the record company membership as well as the entire performer community is to manage, enforce, license and monetise the rights entrusted to us and that is what we will continue to do".
All that money, and yet no new logo. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, PPL will not be getting a new logo to celebrate their merger with AURA and PAMRA. Some poor excuse about wanting to keep costs down so they can pass on greater royalty payments to performers and record labels. Like they need the money - they'll just waste it on extravagant lifestyles and silly file-sharer lawsuits. Much better to spend it hiring a top designer to come up with a new logo. Did we ever mention that CMU's sister company UnLimited Creative offers fantastic design services, by the way?