PRS For Music has announced a record £174 million royalty distribution to members – the highest ever April payment in its history – a 15% year-on-year increase.
International collections have continued to drive increased royalty payments for members, reaching £64.3m, up 19% against the same period in 2019. Alongside live royalties, £21.4m was distributed to PRS’ members from the public performance of music in shops, cafés, restaurants, jukeboxes, fitness classes, cinemas and general business, while combined live and public performance royalties were up 68%.
In support of members most immediately affected by the impact of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, PRS prioritised live performance royalty processing, reducing average turnaround time to three months, which led to a substantial increase in live monies distributed for the April distribution, totalling £18.3m.
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.”
To ensure the time from stream to payment is minimised wherever possible, there has been an increase in online royalty processing of major digital service providers and there will be additional focus going forward on the smaller scale services.
