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Jesus and Mary Chain, Robert Fripp and more sue PRS for Music over concert royalties

Exclusive: Organisation that collects and distributes royalties in UK says it will ‘vigorously defend’ lawsuit which alleges preferential treatment for major songwriters

Those writers, in turn, face prohibitive fees and administrative red tape if they want to withdraw their rights from PRS and instead directly license with promoters, venues and music festivals. Pace claims to have seen internal PRS documentation showing the major writers participating in the MLCS are offered an average administration fee of 0.2%, while the “99.9% of everyone else” are charged admin of 23% on the ordinary tariff. In a separate move, Dave Rowntree of Blur began a class action suit against PRS in April, alleging it is in violation of UK and EU competition rules over how it distributes “black box” income (the term for money that cannot, for reasons including incomplete writer data or contact details, be paid through).

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