How to Register With PRS for Music (Step by Step, 2026)

PRS for Music collects performance royalties for songwriters, composers and publishers in the UK. Here's the process, and the part that actually determines whether you get paid.

Before you apply

You need to be a songwriter or composer with music that is being, or will be, performed publicly, broadcast or streamed. There's no requirement to be signed or successful — writing and having your work used is the bar.

Have ready:

• Your legal name, and any performing name or alias you write under.

• Bank details for royalty payments.

• A list of your works with co-writers and agreed splits.

• Your co-writers' IPI numbers where they have them.

That last item is the one people don't have, and it's the one that causes registrations to stall.

The cost

£100 one-off to join as a writer, including VAT. £400 as a publisher. It's a lifetime membership, not an annual subscription.

If you're self-published — meaning no publisher handles your work — you can consider registering a publishing entity as well, which lets you collect the publisher's half of the composition rather than leaving it unclaimed. See publisher share vs writer share for why that half exists.

MCPS is a separate £100 add-on, covering mechanical rights, and can be added during the application or later.

Step by step

• 1. Apply through the PRS for Music website as a writer member, paying the joining fee.

• 2. Receive your membership and IPI/CAE number. This number identifies you uniquely across every society in the world. Save it somewhere you'll find it — every co-writer will ask for it, forever.

• 3. Register your works. This is a separate action from joining, and it's the step that pays. Each song needs its title, all writers, their IPIs, and splits totalling exactly 100%.

• 4. Register live performances of your own works separately — see submitting setlists to PRS.

• 5. Keep it current. Every new song needs registering. This never stops being true, and it's where catalogues quietly go uncollected.

The mistakes that stall royalties

• Joining and never registering works. Membership alone pays nothing. This is the big one.

• Splits that don't total 100%. The registration doesn't complete.

• Co-writer registered a different split. Both shares can freeze in dispute while the society reconciles.

• Title mismatches. "Title" and "Title (Radio Edit)" registered as the same work by different parties.

• Missing IPIs for co-writers, so the society can't identify who the other half belongs to.

• Forgetting the publisher share if you're self-published.

Timing

Royalties are slow and this is normal. Distributions run on a cycle, and money from a performance can take six to eighteen months to reach you — longer for international, where a foreign society collects first and passes it through PRS. A quiet first year is not evidence that something went wrong.

Keep one canonical record of every song

Musavise's catalogue tool stores each song with every writer's legal name, PRO and IPI, flags any song whose splits don't total 100%, and holds ISRCs and ISWCs alongside — so registering a work is copying from a record you already have rather than reconstructing it. The royalty hub tracks which registrations you've completed and which are still open.

All of it lives in one free Musavise account — free means free, within honest limits, and your data exports whenever you want it. Create your free account; it takes about two minutes.