In its Q4 distribution today (15 December), UK music licensing company PPL will make a payment of £43.2 million to more than 148,000 performers and recording rightsholders, either as direct members of PPL or indirectly through other collective management organisations (CMOs). These monies were collected by PPL for the use of recorded music in the UK and internationally.
This distribution includes payments for the highest number of performers and recording rightsholders ever paid in a quarterly distribution by PPL. This record total reflects the important technological and operational investments made by PPL and the neighbouring rights industry over the last decade in support of more accurate, efficient royalty payments. PPL has one of the most comprehensive repertoire databases in the world, holding detailed performer and recording rightsholder information on more than 20 million recordings, supporting PPL in maximising the royalty revenue it collects and distributes. The Virtual Recording Database (VRDB) from performer CMO trade body SCAPR is helping make recorded music performer line-up data around the world more accurate, supporting more accurate royalty distributions for performers from CMOs like PPL. RDx, the global recorded music data portal commissioned by IFPI and WIN and built and run by PPL, allows recording rightsholders to directly share track metadata with CMOs around the world, again promoting the efficient distribution of royalties around the world.
This is also the eighth year that non-featured performers have received supplementary remuneration administered by PPL for Copyright Term Extension (see notes below). More than 9,500 performers from the UK and around the world received supplementary remuneration payments in this distribution from recordings released between 1963 and 1970.
Finally, included in this Q4 payment is revenue from PPL’s sister company VPL which licenses music videos when they are played in public or broadcast on TV.
Peter Leathem, PPL Chief Executive Officer, said: “It is fantastic to see out the year with such a positive result for PPL and the many performers and recording rightsholders who benefit from our work. We are able to pay more direct and indirect members than ever before because of the neighbouring rights and technology expertise we have across our business, which helps us to maximise the revenue coming in to and going out of PPL. Thank you to each and every member of staff at PPL, and also to our many industry partners for working to drive technological and operational improvements in our industry over the years. The importance of this work can be seen in today’s distribution as we deliver a valuable source of income for tens of thousands of artists, session musicians and independent and major labels.”
