Music Venue Trust have launched the ‘Set The Record Straight’ campaign against PRS For Music – calling for fairer and more transparent fees, as artists and gig spaces complain of devastating bills and huge “black holes” of unclaimed money.
MVT represent hundreds of UK grassroots music venues across the UK, and today (Tuesday April 14) they announced details of ‘Set The Record Straight: Fair Licensing Fees’, with a view to spotlight how PRS For Music’s licensing fees are calculated, applied and enforced across the UK grassroots music venue sector. It comes after finding “systemic issues” in the way charges are assessed, along with “incorrect capacity calculations” and “unclear liability between promoters and venues”.
PRS – a body who collect and pay royalties when a member’s music is played in public, broadcast, downloaded, streamed, or performed live both in the UK and around the world – state that: “Live royalties are the result of a chain of activity: from the writing and performance of a work to the licensing of the venue, the provision of accurate event data, and the submission of setlists. Every link in that chain matters in ensuring writers are paid when their works are performed live”.
However, MVT have identified more than £666,000 in discrepancies linked to PRS-related licensing charges, spanning venues across England, Scotland and Wales. In one case alone, they found a £90,000 error – which MVT says would be enough to permanently close a grassroots venue.
MVT found discrepancies in fees across the UK, with more than £56,000 in the North West, over £20,000 in the South West, nearly £50,000 in London, more than £80,000 in Wales and over £75,000 in Scotland. These figures, they state, “reflect a broader pattern of billing based on estimated rather than actual usage, with charges in some cases linked to maximum theoretical capacity rather than real attendance or sellable space.”
Dylan Clarke is the booker at the 600-capacity venue The Brook in Southampton. He told NME about a long and frustrating history – including around 1,000 emails – of invoicing between his accountant and PRS before long periods of no contact and then crippling invoices.
“We didn’t hear anything for months, we were constantly fighting fires at the venue and then out of nowhere we suddenly got an absolutely massive bill,” said Clarke. “It went on and on and on with no contact.”
He said that he went through three account managers at PRS “who just disappeared” before receiving “another massive bill”, when MVT stepped in. “There was a lot of negotiation and PRS were a bit ashamed of how they’d been handling our account over the last 10 years or so and gave us a reduced bill. At one point, there was a big court case, which was a bit scary because we couldn’t afford it.”
Clarke said that The Brook had reached a stage of equilibrium” with PRS with the help of MVT, who arranged a structured repayment plan of around £1,000 per month.
“We’re reasonably healthy at the moment, I don’t know what the current storm is going to bring, but I can imagine other venues being in the same situation we were,” he continued.
“You get on with paying the electricity bill and the staff and you’re not prepared for this massive bill to come. A lot of venues are in a worse state than we are currently. There’s a lack of transparency and business is really tough.”
The booker said that his main gripe was not having the staff or the infrastructure to trace which performing artists are PRS-registered or not. “We just end up paying out, because it’s not worth my time to try to reduce the bill a bit,” he admitted. “We’re basically paying PRS 4.2 per cent of ticket prices for people who aren’t going to get the money.”
PRS have stated that “where royalties can’t yet be matched to the correct work or creator because the necessary data (e.g. a setlist) hasn’t been provided to us, those funds are held while we work to match them or we receive claims from members. We make unclaimed royalties available to members and other societies so they can easily identify and claim what they are owed”.
Music Venue Trust CEO Mark Davyd recently posted a series of blogs about the issue, at one point highlighting how there are often times where “without an event record the money collected for [a] show” goes to PRS but “sits in a separate, undifferentiated pool with no attribution to any specific performance or writer”.
These royalties are held for a minimum of three years “to give songwriters and composers the opportunity to submit claims” with PRS publishing these details annually. PRS claim: “Our priority is always to ensure royalties are paid as accurately as possible, including working with customers to ensure we receive more of the data needed to pay creators”.
However, Clarke explained the confusion and anger among venues and artists at “the black hole where the money is.”
“Between March 2022 and June 2025, we estimate £14,000 of unclaimed money from artists,” he told NME. “Loads of them would be PRS-registered and would be easy for them to find, but it’s just sitting in PRS’ bank.
“Some of them are higher ticket prices so that’s £500-600 from one show that’s just sat there. It’s crazy because I’ve paid it and it should be in the artist or the writer’s hands, and PRS should have the infrastructure to get it to them.”
“Some of the money in that black hole doesn’t belong to them because they’re not PRS-registered, so who does it belong to? It needs investigating. If it’s that much money just for my venue then just imagine how much is unclaimed in total.”
Clarke ended by saying that he would “like PRS to spend more on chasing where this money goes” and taking more responsibility. “PRS is a really big organisation,” he added. “They could get this done and paid out.”
Artist and grassroots campaigner Sam Duckworth – also known as Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly. – echoed the frustration that he’d felt as a musician dealing with PRS.
“Over the years I’ve had tracks paid to publishers I haven’t been signed to on alarming regularity,” he told NME. “Shows still labeled as ‘unclaimed’ in the middle of tours where the setlist is correctly registered, venues have paid and adjacent shows were paid. I’ve had some shows simply ‘pending’ for years. Often not through lack of trying on both sides. I’ve heard talk of blockchains, the power of data and a myriad of technological promises that have never reached fruition.”
He continued: “In theory, the PRS is one of the great parts of the British Music Industry. In practice, it is behind the curve. I believe in the collective rights of artists, but they must exist in a fit-for-purpose mechanism, that utilises modern technology in practice and is accurate and efficient. If this mechanism fails, I should be allowed to opt out, or to seek an alternative.
“Acting like a charity, whilst being a defacto monopoly is no longer a sustainable position, when stakeholders are being failed across the board. I would urge the PRS to undertake a transparent and open process, where artists, managers and other representatives of the industry can speak freely, knowing that their practical recommendations are taken into account with external scrutiny and benchmarking. It’s going to be much easier (and cheaper) to honestly fix the issue, than to continue pretending that working most of the time is enough to justify the increasing regularity where it simply doesn’t work as intended.”
Duckworth added: “This is a moment to make things better and I urge them to take it or let us find solutions elsewhere.”
Now, the campaign is pushing for PRS to ensure “fair licensing” that sees songwriters and composers are paid when their work is performed, while correcting such vast “inaccuracies” in how those fees are calculated and enforced to relieve pressure on an already stretched sector where profit margins are tight.
MVT’s Rights Management Specialist Gareth Kelly argued that “PRS licensing should work for everybody” factoring in venues, promoters, artists and songwriters, but that the money isn’t going where it should be.
“The issue is not whether fees should be paid, they absolutely should,” he said. “The issue is whether those fees are being calculated accurately, applied fairly and charged to the right party. What we’re seeing too often is a system that relies on assumptions rather than reality, and that can create serious financial consequences for grassroots venues.”
MVT also highlighted ongoing concerns around liability, enforcement practices, legal threats and court cases, and the need for a “significant overhaul of tariffs in the grassroots sector”.
Mark Davyd, CEO of MVT added: “Licensing systems are complex, and too often they operate in a space that people don’t fully understand. That lack of clarity makes it harder to challenge inaccuracies and easier for problems to persist.
“This campaign is about bringing transparency into that space and making sure the system works as it should; fairly, accurately and in a way that reflects how grassroots music actually operates.”
Responding to complaints and MVT’s new campaign, a PRS for Music spokesperson told NME that they “license venues for the use of music and relies on the data they provide, including capacity and event information” – defending how calculations are made.
“Estimations are only used when the relevant data has not been provided,” the spokesperson argued. “However, we are continuously investing in and improving the collection of live data to accelerate accurate payment of royalties, including improving setlist collection tools and exploring AI tools to find fan generated setlists to supplement missing data.
“The most effective way to improve outcomes for songwriters is through shared responsibility across the live music ecosystem, and we will continue to work with all parties across the live sector to strengthen every part of that process.”
This comes after the recent news that 30 grassroots venues were lost forever between July 2024 and July 2025, and last year alone saw more than half of those remaining making no profit and over 6,000 jobs lost, pressure has been mounting to help fund touring for artists to help prevent the existential threat to the future of the UK’s talent pipeline.
The last decade has seen the UK suffer from the “complete collapse of touring“, with 175 towns and cities declared “gig deserts”, and 35million people without live music in their area or community.
Pressure is mounting on larger companies and Live Nation to adopt a £1 ticket levy on all gigs at arena level and above to aid grassroots venues and artists by the end of June, before the government step in to make it mandatory.