Back in April, PRS for Music announced it was conducting a review of the Popular Music Concerts Tariff (Tariff LP). The original closing date for responses was June 8th but this was extended to allow the Concert Promoters Association to conduct further research. The deadline has now been extended to 30 September 2015.
At present concert promoters must pay a fee of 3% of gross receipts to PRS which is then distributed to songwriters and publishers of works performed at the concert. Historically this tariff has been a contentious issue for stakeholders, particularly promoters. Indeed, the promoters’ trade organisation, the aforementioned Concert Promoters Association, was founded in 1986 to oppose a proposed tariff increase from 2% to 6%. In 1988 the Copyright Tribunal set the existing rate at 3%. A review was conducted as recently as 2010 where the PRS decided no change was necessary.
It will be interesting to see how (if at all!) the debate has moved on since 2010. In the meantime PopRights’ Ken Barr wrote blog post about the Review for Live Music Exchange which can be found here.
PopRights 