TheMusicLicence - PPL PRS - WTF and WWSTWD

Not needed for the live acts - as you say, it's their original work.

I would have thought the DJ would already have a PRS licence - might be worth checking.

I agree that email wording looks very scammy, however: https://www.gov.uk/licence-to-play-live-or-recorded-music .

Is there a phone number in the email that matches that on the website?

The fact they are quoting the proper website makes it seem legit.

Main stumbling block may be the DJ. If he’s licenced just reply saying ‘thanks, we’ve got it covered - bands play their own material and DJ is licensed’.

Lots of bands can’t help but pop the odd cover in though!

pplprs.co.uk Is legitimate, as they cover all performing music royalties

I have had to use them over the years for charity events, this included live bands performing original as well as cover music. As a charitable venue, we had to provide the licence even when hosting a professional DJ

If it is only for a one day event, I would negotiate a price of less than £50, we paid around £300 to cover 4x community festivals a year, plus radio or streamed music on weekends when hosting public events

My experience is they are open to negotiations, which seems like a strange way to operate. They originally wanted to charge me an additional £500 a year for having a radio on in our volunteer break room, so I had to play their game and say we “no longer” had a radio in the volunteer area.

As they are, somehow, aware of your upcoming event, you will likely have to engage with them. My advice would be to downplay any money you will generate and emphasise how little money you have as a volunteer/community fete/think of the children and they should be understanding

I was a DJ for years and never had a PRS licence - it was always the venue that was licenced, not me.

Thanks everyone for the information and advice. I'll pass this onto the organiser.

I guess they found our website and decided to scrape it and ping off a specualtive email.

Still feels tainted in everyway. I noticed they have glowing reviews on Trust Pilot 😉

https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/pplprs.co.uk

Looks like they mainly bum shops for playing a radio 🙁

Also it's nice when musicians get paid.

How does that work, out of interest? Presumably they won't be sending someone along to note down what tracks are played and pay the artist a royalty. How do they work out who gets paid what?

Oh it doesn't work. A bassist I know once got a cheque for 3p.

How does that work, out of interest? Presumably they won’t be sending someone along to note down what tracks are played and pay the artist a royalty. How do they work out who gets paid what?

Actually they sometimes do. I've had PRS employees come and ask me for a tracklist at festival gigs before now (usually at bigger festivals). They also have a system where DJs who are prs members can submit their own tracklists online. And I think they're experimenting with installing a little box that basically Shazams the tracks that get played, but I don't know how widespread that is at the moment.

For cafes and stuff, they just assume they'll play the radio. The radios all submit tracklists now so they'll just take an average of that.

As is my duty I asked the PRS for their PPL licence number …they refused.

As is my duty I reported the PRS to the PPL for not giving me their licence number. I was not well received.

Tell them to **** off from me.

Also it’s nice when musicians get paid.

Why do you they get paid twice with radio? Radio stations must have pay to play the songs, then we have to pay to listen! 🤔

then we have to pay to listen!

You have to pay to broadcast if it's playing in your shop or business,  if you are just listening on the radio in the car you don't pay (obviously BBC stations are different) you can sort of see the point if you are attracting customers by making the "ambiance" of your business more friendly by using someone else's talent etc

I would love to tell them to jog on. But it's not worth the hassle for a one day event.

All artists should be paid for thier efforts if they want to be paid and rightly so.

But not enforced or collected in this way, by a carpet baggy type company.

They make my skin crawl.

🙁

I'll pass on your thoughts to the organiser of the event.

Many thank, to all.

How are artists and songwriters meant to get paid? They aren’t going to track down every use of their music themselves, so they join PRS/PPL (membership is free I think) and PRS attempt to collect and distribute royalties on their behalf. Seems pretty sensible to me, although a pain if you are organizing a small event I agree.

You have to pay to broadcast if it’s playing in your shop or business,  if you are just listening on the radio in the car you don’t pay (obviously BBC stations are different) you can sort of see the point if you are attracting customers by making the “ambiance” of your business more friendly by using someone else’s talent etc

yes, but they also want paid if say you have a car garage which plays the radio in the background all day and you have multiple staff, or if you have a radio in a kitchen/mess room etc.  bizarrely in an office setting if everyone is wearing headphones listening to their own music - no licence; if everyone is listening to one radio then a license is “needed”.

I don’t object to paying artists for their music, I do object to the tone and approach PRS take to try and enforce that.  I don’t know if they’ve ever successfully prosecuted a small business for playing it in the radio in the staff room?  It seems to me that to do so they would need to show which artists were actually playing at the time of the supposed contravention - presumably if it was sport/talk radio type stuff no fee is due?

I did wonder why the Spotify’s of this world haven’t cut them out.   create a Spotify Small business tier which pays extra royalty to the artists for what you actually listen to rather than an average estimate.  Perhaps the small device that Shazam’s could be a similar concept to fund the artists you like rather than a system that is driven on threats?

They are a truly horrible organisation, it puts you off putting on an event that directly benefits the music industry. Emotional vampires

i remember Terry Wogan was very vocal about people not being able to listen to the radio in work places when the bbc was paying massive royalties to play the music in the first place

Awful organisation. They're overly aggressive leaches. I'm all for musicians getting properly paid, but PPL/PRS approach is absolutely wrong. A few years ago they made a mistake on an invoice to us (small festival), and refused to correct it. They sent legal threats instead. I had to escalate to a Government Minister before they backed down. Horrible shifty disorganised rabble.

I notice there's a big (unsearchable) list of pdfs showing the tariffs. If I was putting on an event (and they caught me!), I'd go through the docs til I found the cheapest one that applied to my event - eg. I saw one for £15, and buy that to cover it.

bizarrely in an office setting if everyone is wearing headphones listening to their own music – no licence; if everyone is listening to one radio then a license is “needed”.

This is the stupidity of.

If I sit in my office (on my own as I work alone!) with earphones in I don't have to pay - listen through speakers and I do have to pay just in case one of my customers hears a snippet of broadcast radio!

If I listen on Spotify the artist is being paid.
If I listen to the radio the radio station is paying the artist.

They seem like an organisation that exists just to fund itself.

Also a working DJ, I don't have a PRS license as that falls to the venue to have one.  But I do weddings in non-venue locations (outdoors, barns etc etc as covid opened up new locations/ideas)

I suspect by the fact they refer to your event as a festival they are getting excited, a quick call explaining this is a small village fete should get their expectations back in line.  Mention its all live music with local bands etc

Also speak to your DJ, he may have one if through an agency

A sports club (small clubhouse, no staff, honesty bar) I was treasurer of was threatened by them. The only music is someone's phone playing tunes occasionally. I simply said no music was played and they buggered off.