PRS acts as an intermediary between the companies that play the music, such as radio stations and live events, and the people who create the music. The companies sign licences and then PRS distributes royalties to the songwriters.

This group of songwriters has paired up with PACE Rights Management, who are an organisation that offers artists direct licencing of their live public performance rights. PACE was founded by artist managers who are critical of PRS’s system. The group are pushing for songwriters and publishers’ right to efficiently directly license their live public performance rights, so they don’t have to go through the PRS.

Direct licensing would mean that artists get royalty payments faster, have fewer deductions from their payments and better transparency.

In a joint statement by the group of songwriters they have said that “Regretfully, after years of PRS refusing to discuss or constructively engage with these issues – including the withdrawal of Live Performance rights, the lack of transparency around international deductions, and the operation of the Major Live Concert Service – we have been left with no option but to seek redress through the courts.

“The ball is now firmly in PRS’s court. Either they constructively engage with much needed reforms to empower and benefit writers and publishers, or they continue to resist these necessary changes, and attempt to defend the indefensible by spending yet more of the members’ money on legal costs supporting policies that make the members less money.”

In a statement to the Guardian the PRS responded saying: “Our policies and rules follow a thorough and extensive approval and review process by the Board and the Members’ Council, which is comprised of members and independent non-executive directors appointed by the membership,” it continues saying that “The rules which govern the process for live rights withdrawals were approved by members at the PRS AGM.”

The PRS has what it calls Major Live Concert Service (MLCS) which handles royalty administration for arena- and stadium-level acts which has deals with major songwriters to take an “administrative charge” of £125 per gig from their royalties. However, for other acts PRS takes a 23% cut from the royalties before paying the songwriters. This is capped at £1250.

Pace alleges that the songwriters that are not on the MLCS are being charged 115 times more than the artists who are.

This follows separate action taken by Blur’s Dave Rowntree against PRS in April, where Rowntree alleged that the PRS is in violation of UK and EU competition rules over how it deals with “black box” which is money that cannot be paid through for various reasons.

The ‘Sunday Lunch’ videos were born out of the pandemic in 2020 – featuring King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp and 80’s pop star Toyah Wilcox (who goes by the name of Toyah) playing light-hearted covers of classic songs such as ‘Enter Sandman’ and ‘Bad Reputation’ in there living room and often dressed in fancy dress.

The videos became a viral hit during the COVID pandemic and have continued to attract a lot of attention as the pair continue to make the videos.

Talking to Eonmusic, Toyah Wilcox spoke about being approached by production companies regarding the project: “We have a documentary crew following us, and we have quite a big production company scripting an idea at the moment,” she said.

She later added: “Obviously, we won’t be in it, it’s for actors to play, but that’s all in the back kind of pool of what you call pre-production. All of that’s going on.”

This information supports what the two have explained in the past about the longevity of the series as explained during an interview at Glastonbury, they said: “We’ve actually been picked up by a world agency and we have decided that we’re going to give them a set amount of years, at the moment our social media numbers are growing. So as long as those audiences are there and that kind of pull is there, we’ll keep going. But I will not watch him do anything that makes his health suffer.”

Toyah Wilcox later added during the interview: “Another bit of news that’s happening is we’re being courted by TV at the moment. We’ve got about three ideas in the very embryonic form that we should be shooting next year.”

The success of the videos has seen the married couple touring together for the first time, including shows at Glastonbury and the Isle of Wight Festival. The duo are currently about to kick off their ‘Sunday Lunch Rock Party’ tour at the end of September in Wimborne before heading to multiple other venues in the UK in places like London, Birmingham and Liverpool.

Tour dates

30/09/23 – Tivoli – Wimborne

01/10 – Town Hall – Cheltenham

07/10 – Royal Hall – Harrogate

08/10 – Playhouse – Whitley Bay

09/10 – The Lowry – Salford

14/10 – Assembly Hall – Worthing

16/10 – Philharmonic Hall – Liverpool

19/10 – The Apex – Bury St Edmunds

20/10 – The Anvil – Basingstoke

21/10 – Shepherds Bush Empire – London

25/10 – Opera House – Buxton

26/10 – Theatre Severn – Shrewsbury

28/10 – Grand Theatre – Swansea

29/10 – Town Hall – Birmingham

Sir Elton John Performs To Biggest Ever Crowd At Glastonbury

Brits Rising Star Winners FLO To Perform At The Isle Of Wight Festival

Willcox & Fripp Cover Queens of the Stone Age’s ‘No One Knows’

Willcox & Fripp Back With Cover of Classic The Clash Song

The David Bowie tribute tour will commence on April 4 in Houston, Texas and will conclude on May 8 in Tacoma, Washington, US. Tickets will be available for purchase here. Speaking of honour and gratitude, Murphy said in a statement, “Such a surprise to be invited to celebrate Bowie in this outing, and alongside a great lineup. So enticing to play the part.” 

Scrote acts as the main leader behind Celebrating David Bowie which has been an ongoing project since 2017 and Todd Rundgren was placed on the spot as the frontman last year. Scrote said in a statement, “I’m thrilled to honour David again with this new explosive collection of truly unique and brilliant artists and musicians. This new show represents two sides of Bowie. With Peter Murphy, we have the dark baritone shrouded in mystery and wonder. With Adrian Belew, the tuneful tenor gleefully singing Bowie’s favourites while delivering the otherworldly guitar playing he is revered for.”

A statement released by the press via Rolling Stone announced that the 2023 edition will “interpret Bowie’s greatest hits” a specialist greatly emphasising Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust proto-punk era, including his Berlin trilogy records, “Low”, “Heroes”, and “Lodger” and his later infused years, inspired by Trent Reznor.

Belew was the guitarist for Bowie’s 1979 album, Lodger and was a session musician on the late singer’s 1978 Isolar II tour and 1990 Sound+Vision tour. Eric Schermerhorn accompanied Bowie’s 1991 tour (along with Tin Machine) as vocalist and guitarist.

Last year, Murphy has been touring with the reunited Bauhaus but unfortunately, the pandemic hit which resulted in an ultimate unravelling when the frontman entered rehab late August. The other band members agreed since then to reform as Love and Rockets and will play at the Cruel World festival this coming May.

The video shows Fripp with a yellow waistcoat and colourful tie, as Toyah dons a white dress and reflective sunglasses, singing the track’s tune and turning it into what NME describes as a “moody, haunting number“. According to the description, “Toyah has a new keep fit regime” as she jogs on the spot against Fripp’s strident guitar strums.

The couple started their Sunday Lunch series back in 2020 when Fripp was finding himself lost without being able to perform live. Toyah explained; “Here I am in this house with this 74-year-old husband who I really don’t want to live without. He was withdrawing, so I thought: ‘I’m going to teach him to dance.’ And it became a challenge. I do the lighting, the filming, the conceptual side and the persuading Robert to take part”.

They’ve been covering classic songs from a whole host of different artists, ranging from David Bowie to Metallica and The Clash (their cover of the latter’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go“ can be read about here).

It’s not just music either. Some of the other social media tasks they’ve taken upon themselves since lockdown include Q&As with fans and agony aunt talks. If you want to see what it’s all about, you can subscribe to Toyah’s YouTube channel over here.

However, it’s not all been plain sailing for one of the duo. Fripp is involved in a lawsuit against Universal Music Group. It concerns royalties for a King Crimson sample in Kanye West’s song “Power“, believing his party to have been underpaid for their streaming royalties. Fripp’s been a notorious defender of King Crimson’s royalties and copyright over the last few years. You can read more about the lawsuit here.

Fripp said on Facebook that “There is a longer story to be told, and likely to astound innocents and decent, ordinary people who believe that one is paid equitably for their work, and on the appointed payday. This dispute has been dragging on for several years, unnecessarily IMO.”

As for Toyah, her album Posh Pop from last August was her first since 2008’s In the Court of the Crimson Queen, and she’s got a lot of tour dates coming up, tickets for which can be gotten here.

As reported in Variety; “When DCM became aware of West’s copyright infringement, they contacted UMG, who — along with West and his production company Rock the World — signed an agreement with DCM two months later legally allowing West to sample the King Crimson track in return for a 5.33% royalty on each copy of “Power” that was sold or “otherwise exploited. According to the terms of the license agreement, UMG are required to pay DCM a royalty on the same terms that West receives royalties from the track. And under the terms of West’s agreement with UMG at the time, the royalty figure for a streaming track was equivalent to that of a track on a physical CD.”

“However, DCM claim in their lawsuit, which was filed in the U.K. High Court last month, that UMG “has failed, and continues to fail, to comply with its royalty accounting obligations in respect of one mode of exploitation, namely the making available of the Power recording to consumers through so-called ‘streaming’ services.”

Essentially, this makes UMG potentially liable to pay back all of the streaming royalties based on the sums they would be receiving through physical CD sales (as was stipulated in the 2010 contract). Yet up until now, UMG has been paying a proportionate percentage of what they receive from the streaming platforms. With Spotify for instance, it is estimated that each stream makes an earning of $0.0033. This therefore means that members of King Crimson have been cultivating far less than what was proposed in the contractual obligation.

The KC guitarist Robert Fripp made his feelings clear in a Facebook post. Stating that he has enlisted the help of Ian Mill QC of Blackstone Chambers, who recently won the case which saw Ed Sheeran charged with plagiarism. You can see Fripp’s post down below: