PRS vs PPL: What Each One Pays, and Why You Need Both

The single most useful sentence in UK music royalties: PRS pays for the song, PPL pays for the recording. Two different rights, two different organisations, two separate registrations. Most UK artists need both, and a great many are in only one.

PRS for Music — the song

PRS collects for songwriters, composers and publishers when the composition is performed or communicated to the public: radio and TV play, live performance, streaming's performance component, music in shops, pubs and venues.

If you wrote it, this is your side. If you only performed on it, PRS has nothing for you.

Cost: a one-off £100 to join as a writer (including VAT), or £400 as a publisher. It's a lifetime membership rather than an annual fee.

PPL — the recording

PPL collects for performers and recording rightsholders when the actual recording is played in public or broadcast. Same radio play, different right, different money — it's paid to whoever played on and owns the master.

This is where session musicians, featured artists and self-releasing artists who own their masters get paid, and it's the one most often missed.

Cost: free. PPL membership costs nothing for performers or recording rightsholders. Joining does not transfer any rights to them — performers hold statutory rights to a share of licence fees for public performance and broadcast of recordings they played on.

There is no good reason for a UK performer not to be registered with PPL, which makes the number who aren't quite striking.

The same radio play generates two payments

Worth spelling out, because it's the clearest illustration. Your track gets played on BBC 6 Music:

• PRS pays the writers of the song.

• PPL pays the performers on that recording and whoever owns the master.

If you wrote it, performed it and own the master — the normal position for a self-releasing artist — you are entitled to money from both, and you must be registered with both to receive it.

What about TheMusicLicence?

A common confusion. PPL and PRS jointly operate PPL PRS Ltd, which sells TheMusicLicence to businesses that play music. That's the licensee side — venues, shops, cafés paying to play music. It has nothing to do with your membership as an artist, and it isn't something you buy.

Registering isn't enough on its own

Membership of either organisation pays nothing by itself. You have to register each work (PRS) and each recording (PPL), with the correct splits and performer credits. A PRS member with a catalogue of unregistered songs collects nothing, and this is the single most common failure.

For PPL, register every recording you performed on with your role — featured artist, non-featured performer, producer — including sessions for other people's records. That's money you're owed for work you already did.

Then there's MCPS, and international

PRS covers performing rights; MCPS covers mechanical rights and is a separate £100 add-on — see the MCPS side of UK royalties. And if you co-write across borders, registering a cross-border co-write has its own traps.

Track what you've actually done

Musavise's royalty hub walks the registrations UK artists are typically missing — PRS, MCPS, PPL, publishing administration, distribution — and tracks which are done, in progress or not started, per act. The leak audit does a quick version with no account if you'd rather just find out where you stand.

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.