MBW Views is a series of exclusive op/eds from eminent music industry people… with something to say. Here, Tony Barton, Director of Writer Relations at the UK’s PRS For Music, runs through the initiatives, ranging from instructional networking events to process-smoothing technology, that are making it easier for songwriters and composers to understand and manage their careers and finances…
The speed and quantity of new music being created is astronomical. In the last five years, nearly 40,000 new songwriters and composers have joined PRS, taking the total up to 175,000.
In just one year, 2023, our repertoire grew by a record three million to over 41 million works; a surefire sign that the craft of songwriting and composition continues to inspire.
There are fewer barriers to entry, with access to more tools and services to facilitate works creation than ever before. At the same time, music streaming has simplified the releasing of music, instantaneously opening a potential global market for music creators.
However, this doesn’t mean it is easier to be a successful music creator. Songwriters and composers are working in an unprecedentedly competitive landscape.
Therefore, it’s crucial that those organisations which represent music creators adapt to meet the new challenges, needs and expectations of those they have the privilege to represent. This means the songwriters and composers behind the music set the direction of change and how the business of collective management is being shaped.
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, an African British classical composer of mixed heritage, penned some of the most popular manuscripts of his time, performed and shared the world over. He was the Ed Sheeran of his day. His death, in 1914, aged just 37, happened amid the financial hardship he endured due to the lack of copyright protection of his works.
That same year, to ensure that no songwriter or composer and their rights ever go unprotected again, the Performing Right Society was formed. This sentiment, to stand for songwriters and composers, is still at the core of what PRS is doing 110 years later.
PRS for Music is listening to and learning from its members, actively fostering a meaningful two-way open dialogue, to reshape its future priorities and investments. Members are integral to everything we do, from governance to advocacy, education to networking through to collaboration and celebration. We exist and thrive because they exist and thrive.
Yes, the central role and focus of today’s CMO must remain to pay members their royalties as quickly, accurately and efficiently as possible. But members need, and are demanding, more. They want their society to nurture, collaborate, build communities and provide gateways for them into the industry.
Historically, CMOs have been defined and perceived solely as systems and infrastructure providers – but a modern CMO must equally be defined as a support system for its members bringing with it a sense of belonging to a shared cause. That’s why education, building strong member networks and global collaborations are at the heart of any modern CMO, just as much as generating royalties.
We have seen first-hand how fostering this sense of community is powerful and, as we learn through osmosis, through inspiration and admiration of our peers on the challenges faced by members, we can be their first port of call to help solve those challenges.
“It’s the first significant step in more than a decade that will improve the economic infrastructure and flow of royalties, as well as our members’ experience.”
Hosting over 250 education and outreach events annually, we know that bringing the music community together and connecting music creators with experts, cultivates knowledge exchange and safe spaces where the business of music can be taught and better understood, further empowering
our members.
We launched PRS Members’ Days to expand our reach and impact, taking PRS to the UK regions and out of London; to really connect in person, to be there in a human experience, and to encourage the cycle of feedback, investigate and improve. It’s working.
As well as Members’ Days, we spotted a gap in certain niche areas where our members wanted specific learning and networking opportunities. Based on this we created PRS Connects – an opportunity for like-minded creators to get together in person, to share their experiences and learnings. From sessions for mothers in music to learning how to create for sync, Connects has been a sold-out offering since its launch.
The holistic offering of the PRS Foundation – the UK’s leading grassroots funder plus the PRS Members’ Fund – means we can become what our members need at any given time.
Making Data Easy
Being a successful music creator increasingly means being a successful data steward.
In its Year-End Music Report, Luminate stated that on-demand streams – audio and video included – grew from 5.3 trillion to around 7.1 trillion in 2023. That’s a lot of data to match in order to pay royalties. When the critical metadata attached to a musical work is missing or only partial, it takes longer to pay those royalties out.
We identified three areas where developing new products that would significantly assist our members: making the registration of their copyright easier; giving detailed access to royalty data; and helping link copyright and recording information to help digital matching.
Earlier this year, we launched a new works registration tool, Register My Music, streamlining and simplifying the collection of new works data. It is often said, but it is always true, ‘bad data in means bad data out’, and we are ensuring members can give us the best possible information about their works as quickly and hassle-free as possible.
What began as a sandbox exercise from our Innovation leadership team has developed into an Insights tool giving members the ability to view and interrogate their data. This is evolving into more ambitious groundbreaking products where our members can view their data ahead of royalty distribution to aid with planning, royalty assurance and error identification before there is a financial impact.
In a bid to steer the industry to resolve the challenge of matching metadata relating to copyright works and recordings, we launched Project Nexus. A PRS-pioneered project uniting PROs, publishers, labels and DSPs across the world to link a unique song identifier (ISWC and ISRC) to the digital file of a new recording before release. In addition, we released to members the data of more than three million works, giving them far greater visibility of the data we hold.
We launched the Get Paid Guide, dubbed the creators’ guide to metadata. The Guide rolled out internationally earlier this year, tackling the other side of this long-standing issue on clean data. We knew that the two sides of this coin – launching the tech innovation plus the education piece – could be powerful by leaning into our songwriter community and teaching them about how critical the ingestion of accurate data is.
Following thousands and thousands of visits to the website, we are seeing the metadata education spill onto social media platforms where our members, confident in their new understanding, are sharing the learning in a peer-to-peer method, transporting our message in ways we could only dream of.
PRS for Music helped open doors and pushed (hard) for global collaboration to make Nexus happen. It’s the first significant step in more than a decade that will improve the economic infrastructure and flow of royalties as well as our members’ experience.
These improvements are putting power back into the hands of the music creator and rightsholder. They are affording more autonomy and control over how they manage their rights, giving them direct access to the musical mainframe in a way that has never existed before.
Without songwriters and composers, music as we know it simply wouldn’t exist. Without the recognition of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and the inequitable ecosystem of his time, it’s possible that writing music wouldn’t generate a viable income today.
110 years ago, Coleridge-Taylor famously said: “I want to be nothing in the world except what I am – a musician.” PRS for Music continues to make it easier for that to be true.
Music Business Worldwide
