Regarding your music, of course it is only right that you receive financial benefit for your work, but doesn’t the production company that commissions you pay you? And doesn’t the broadcaster pay the PRS for the right to use it? I know that part of my BBC License fee goes towards Radio 3s PRS payment, so should the PRS get a second bite at the cherry when I play music by dead composers in my second-hand book shop?

I suspect at the moment the bigger artists receive bigger amounts and the smaller artists receive a pittance based on record sales rather than listening figures. Who knows whther we are listening to Radio One, two, Three or Four? These stations each play a totally different range of music.

I think it would be fairer to increase the levy on radio stations as in my experience, being commercial businesses who sell advertising,they have an accurate idea of how many listeners they have at any time and where those listeners are listening from, ie work or home. There are stations who directly target people at work>

If the PRS was a government organisation, they would hopefully be subject to severe cutbacks under the quango reduction program.

It would be interesting to know how many big companies are signed up to PRS and more mportantly whether anyone has successfully challenged them in court? I really can’t see this standing up in court, Your honour, we wqant to charge the defendant for listiening to unknown tracks from which we will deduct a percentage and then pay artists , the identity of which we will not disclose.

Common sense – where has it gone, welcome to Rip Off Britain!

OK an artist creates a song / music etc. The artist desperately wants radio stations to air the song / music so that it will be advertised and the general public can hear it; so that they then go out and buy the cd with 5 or more other tracks on it and traditionally it has been like that for years.

All of a sudden from nowhere the PRS who proclaims to be in favour of the artist start asking for money from small businesses and are using the public performance angle as a crowbar to extract money.
So what have they done?
Levied a charge against businesses for playing a radio which has resulted in businesses removing radios from their premises because we do not want to pay to listen to a radio which in most cases is just back ground music.

So now the artist does not get heard in the places where people spend most of their time. So the prospective buyer does not hear the music so doesn’t know it exists so it never gets sold.

I think that the radio stations should now charge the artist for advertising their records particularly the most affluent of them, let’s see how long the PRS lasts then, because all this does is push people toward the inevitable alternatives of paying for music like the internet burning CDs even if it is of lesser quality.
Most up and coming artist would give their right arm to be on the radio and be heard by millions.

I have banned the playing of radios at my company in direct response to the existence of the PRS taking these draconian methods. This action has had no effect on production or the well being of my staff despite the PRS using selling tactics like: “Production will decrease”, and “Workers are more likely to take time off”, trying to sell the use of a radio in commercial premises so that they can impose a levy for it.
My wife has ceased using a radio in her salon for the same reasons.

I say get rid of the PRS it’s not needed and it is detrimental to the music business as a whole. The only people who want it are ‘has-beens’, greedy bastards, and PRS directors who want paying a disproportionate amount of money for what they do or don’t do.
Coley