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.

We’ve just released our financial results for 2021.

– £777.1 million collected in music royalties
– £677.2m distributed to rightsholders
– 27 trillion ‘performances’ of music processed

See the full details > https://t.co/a4LM00sErK #PRSBigNumbers pic.twitter.com/LRJ91R8U6M

— PRS for Music (@PRSforMusic) April 25, 2022

With years of travel restrictions, social distancing, and all the rest of the stuff we had to deal with, it was practically impossible to tour. If anyone was lucky enough to head to a socially distanced show at one of the more relaxed points of the pandemic, then you may have been grateful to finally be seeing something again… but quite a significant chunk of the concert experience just didn’t work. Sit down, stay still, leave in an orderly fashion – it just wasn’t right. This discomfort was reflected in the numbers too, a decline of another 29.2% (£3.3m) from 2020 means that the sector only pulled in £8m after a number of big earners like Elton John, Dua Lipa, and Eagles were all forced to postpone their tours.

In a concluding statement from the CEO of PRS For Music Andrea Czapary Martin, she says, “The 59.6% uplift in public performance is encouraging as it reflects a marketplace, like the economy, that is getting back to business. Significantly, it underlines the organisation’s ability to adapt to all market sectors to fully monetise and protect the value of the music rights entrusted to us. “. So if you’re comfortable with going to these shows, then chances are they’re back and here to stay.

The live industry today seems to be pretty much back to full strength now. If we’re making predictions of what things may look like in the stats next year; I think 2022 may rake in some significant numbers. 2 years of performing artists being cooped up inside means that now pretty much everyone is starting their touring cycle at the same time. In 2021, the total amount of setlists fell from 124,000 in 2019, to 19,300. Take those 100,000 sets and add them to the 124,000-ish that would have happened this year anyway and you’ve got yourself a busy year as a punter.