PRS for Music is a society that collects money and royalties on behalf of musicians and people in the music industry. Customers purchase a licence to play music in their workspace or other means, which allows them to play music from artists who are members of PRS. When a customer plays a song, the artist earns royalties; PRS collects these royalties from the customer and distributes it to the correct people. They keep 0% of these royalties; it all goes straight to the musicians who deserve it. This means they are a non-profit organisation. PRS for Music is a global company, and they have members all around the world
PRS is broken into different parts. One part of it is the licencing of physical music (eg copying CDs and putting music into things like children’s toys and cards). This field is called MCPS. The other is when songs are performed or streamed in places or played online (this could be in a hairdresser’s, pub concert, on radio, television shows/adverts) and this is simply called PRS as it is the main field in music licencing. PRS also licence festivals; in which they collect 2.7% of all revenues, which goes to the right artists.
As well as MCPS, PRS also has another part to is called PPL. This is similar to PRS, but it focuses more on the artists behind the scenes of the song. For example; PRS would give royalties to the songwriter, producers, publishers, composers and lyricists. However, PPL would give royalties to the session musicians on the song and the overall rights holder of the song like a record label. This is a great example of how all of these fields work together to get money to the right people:
In the music industry, if you take on the role of a publisher, you will be working lots with this company to ensure the label and artists you are working with are paid. This allows songwriters and producers to focus on the creative side of their job as they know they are getting paid and someone is working on the business area for them. Publishers will also make the musicians they are working with into members of PRS, and also licence their music with PRS.
The fee to join PRS can vary, however, there is no annual fee; you pay once and you’re a member forever. If you are a writer, it is £200 to join both societies, but if you are a publisher, it is £800 to join both societies. If you’re in a band, all musicians in that band must join separately to ensure each of them gets paid right. Here are some statistics about PRS and how much it has done in its time:
If your music gets played on TV or radio, you will earn a certain amount of revenue depending on how much of the song is played and when the song is played throughout the day. For example, if your song was played on the radio in the morning, you would get more money from that time slot as people will be driving to work or going to school whilst listening to the radio, so the audience will be larger. These images show how this works and what you would earn depending on the circumstances for both radio and TV.
As well as this, you can earn money from different things like streams, downloads, playing gigs, and selling physical copies of your music. This shows what you would have to do to earn £100 with PRS and MCPS. Obviously, these things would be very hard for a small artist but with working with the right people and getting the right promotion, your name could take off, and you would be doing all of these things in no time.
To help with getting far in music and start to make an earning for your passion, the PRS foundation exists to help new emerging UK artists get a name for themselves and make a sustainable income from their job. They work with promoters, publishers and songwriters to make sure the things you are releasing are high quality and are promoted the best it possibly can be. The foundation has helped over 7,300 people and they also give grants to aspiring musicians to help them financially, no matter who you are.
