PRS For Music Helps Artists Calculate Overseas Royalties

PRS For Music has launched an online tool “to help members who perform their music internationally negotiate full and fair royalty settlements.”   

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The British performing rights society claims the tool removes the difficulty of calculating tariffs in any given country, which often vary significantly in different territories and have “historically been a complex area for bands and their tour managers.”

PRS members are now able to estimate royalties per concert across the globe, and the society claims it is “the first ever collective management organization to have developed and implemented this technology and has made it accessible to its members upon request.”

In 2016, PRS members earned £233.7 million from equivalent societies overseas, which marked a 5 percent increase year-on-year. The new tool, which can also be used for post-performance royalty reconciliation, “will help PRS for Music members uncover any gaps in licensing and distributions, and allow for more proactive and forensic tracking of the tour landscape.”

“We have created something that our touring members will greatly benefit from; it could help bands of a certain size save potentially hundreds of thousands of pounds on a large European or even world tour,” said Karen Buse, the society’s Executive Director of Membership and International. Industry consultant Maria Forte said “the app tells you on a territory-by-territory basis what the published tariff should be, what the applicable discounts might be and, if you plug box office figures in, what the license fee figure should be on the settlement sheet.”