British collection society PRS for Music has reported a record April royalty distribution of £174 million (approximately $215m) to its members, which marks a 15% year-on-year increase.
Royalties are paid to PRS for Music’s 145,500 songwriter, composer and music publisher members in the UK and worldwide when their music is streamed, downloaded, broadcast, performed live and played in public.
The news of the record April payout follows the launch of the PRS Emergency Relief Fund to support its members during the Coronavirus pandemic, which will see grants awarded based on assessment of individual need. Applicants will receive support up to a value of £1,000.
If all of PRS for Music’s members successfully claimed the maximum £1,000 relief, the fund would amount to over £145m ($172m).
PRS’ international collections reached £64.3m ($80m) in April’s payout, up 19% year-on-year.
In order to support members most immediately affected by the impact of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, PRS said in its press release today (April 8) that it has prioritized live performance royalty processing, and has reduced average turnaround time to three months.
This, says PRS, led to a substantial increase in live monies distributed for the April distribution, totalling £18.3m ($23m).
Alongside live royalties, £21.4m ($26m) was distributed to PRS’ members from the public performance of music in shops, cafés, restaurants, jukeboxes, fitness classes, cinemas and general business.
Combined live and public performance royalties were up 68% on 2019.
PRS adds that there has been an increase in online royalty processing of major digital service providers and that there will be additional focus going forward on the smaller scale services, “to ensure the time from stream to payment is minimized wherever possible”.
“We hope that this record April PRS distribution, alongside our recently announced PRS Emergency Relief Fund, will help ease the burden felt by music creators due to Coronavirus.”
Andrea C. Martin, PRS
Andrea C. Martin (pictured), CEO, PRS for Music, said: “In these unprecedented times, it is incredibly important that we are distributing accurate and timely royalties to all of our members, from every revenue stream, as quickly as possible.
“We hope that this record April PRS distribution, alongside our recently announced PRS Emergency Relief Fund, will help ease the burden felt by music creators due to Coronavirus.
“The entire PRS team is working hard to ensure that through this period of significant disruption – especially to live music and UK businesses – we do everything we can to minimise the risk to future distributions.”Music Business Worldwide
