I understand some of the basics about getting radio royalties via PRS, but I've just been looking through the current royalty rates and there's something that still confuses me.

For example, here's what the PRS site has for Kiss 100 royalties:

Kiss 100 FM (Census) R0748 Census 91 £ 1.26 16.5
Kiss 100 FM (Sampled) R0131 Census 91 £ 14.87 16.5

Why is there two separate entries for Census and Sampled? I always thought generally a radio station used only one of those methods.

How would you know whether your track was going going to fall under the 'Census' method and get just £1.26 per minute, or under 'sampled' in which case it would get £14.87 per minute?

they're just going to give all the money to Adele anyways, so it hardly really matters, does it?

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~~~ A weasel hath not such a deal of spleen as you are tossed with! www.feline1.co.uk ~~~

lol. I've had some worthwhile payouts in the past (by my standards - I've got a long way to go before Adele will be looking over her shoulder!), sometimes from really obscure stations around the world, so it's something worth taking seriously.

At least twice now over the past decade, PRS have grandly announced they've teamed up with an audio fingerprinting service (first it was Neilson, then it was Soundmouse), who would be able to automatically analyse all the output from radiostations and mean ludicrous days of some person in an office writing down a day's playlists with a pen and sending the list to PRS and them "extrapolating" to 365 days per year from that to pay people royalties would be gone.

But every time, when I asked "er, so how do we submit recordings to be fingerprinted so that they'll show up in the analysis?", I just get an "er, um, only a beta at the moment, move along there, nothing to see, lols" rubbish in return and replies from the PRS help desk that suggest they don't even understand the conceptual difference between a musical work and recording of a musical work.

Your mileage may vary. Good luck!

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~~~ A weasel hath not such a deal of spleen as you are tossed with! www.feline1.co.uk ~~~

If your music gets played and you are a PRS member you will get an income. If your music is played worldwide you will also get a good income if you subscribe to GEMA etc. It is all about understanding publishing, making sure you are not pounced on by a shark (your usual friendly Tony) and protecting yourself.

I've had numerous plays of my tracks on radio, but have never seen a penny in royalties - what's the crack there?

Quote redalert:

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I've had numerous plays of my tracks on radio, but have never seen a penny in royalties - what's the crack there?

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You PRS registered?

Yep!
Registered with 'em all - PRS, MCPS, PPL.

Edited by redalert (03/12/12 01:26 PM)

then it;'s just bad luck that you've not been in a "sample". The payment system is skewed towards play listed acts - if they ever sort out the fingerprinting tech (which lets face it is so simple I could implement it in an afternoon) then everyone will get paid for each play....

Quote narcoman:

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then it;'s just bad luck that you've not been in a "sample". The payment system is skewed towards play listed acts - if they ever sort out the fingerprinting tech (which lets face it is so simple I could implement it in an afternoon) then everyone will get paid for each play....

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For at least half a decade, *ALL* BBC radio and television has provided 100% accurate complete and total playlist census info to PRS for every second they broadcast.

Funny thing though, when helping a friend get some royalties for having incidental music used in a BBC sitcom, I got to see the state of some of the "cue sheets" the BBC were emailing to PRS, and it became crystal clear why he'd never been paid! They were the Microsoft Excel equivalent of something a drunken tramp might scrawl on the back of a fag packet. In the dark. Using some lipstick.

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~~~ A weasel hath not such a deal of spleen as you are tossed with! www.feline1.co.uk ~~~

Quote feline1:

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Quote narcoman:

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then it;'s just bad luck that you've not been in a "sample". The payment system is skewed towards play listed acts - if they ever sort out the fingerprinting tech (which lets face it is so simple I could implement it in an afternoon) then everyone will get paid for each play....

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For at least half a decade, *ALL* BBC radio and television has provided 100% accurate complete and total playlist census info to PRS for every second they broadcast.

Funny thing though, when helping a friend get some royalties for having incidental music used in a BBC sitcom, I got to see the state of some of the "cue sheets" the BBC were emailing to PRS, and it became crystal clear why he'd never been paid! They were the Microsoft Excel equivalent of something a drunken tramp might scrawl on the back of a fag packet. In the dark. Using some lipstick.

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Yeah - as you've seen; there is a huge difference between what they say, and what is real.

Quote:

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The payment system is skewed towards play listed acts

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So it really does all get paid to Adele then

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