PPL, the world’s largest collector of international royalties for performers and recording rightsholders, and PRS for Music, a world leading music rights management organisations for songwriters, composers, and music publishers, have announced a partnership with Audoo, the music technology company on a mission to revolutionise public performance royalty distributions.
The installation of Audoo’s unique Audio Meters™, in businesses including cafés, bars, hair salons, restaurants, and retail locations across Great Britain, aims to help drive forward and accelerate accurate and transparent royalty distribution to music creators, by identifying the background music being played and reporting this usage back to PPL and PRS for Music.
This initiative will help PPL and PRS for Music to continue to define the global standard of music royalties, enhancing distribution efficiency and delivering optimum payments for their 300,000 collective members.
The Audoo Audio Meters™ are designed to be GDPR-compliant and use smart plug-in technology to securely track and report the music being played in quasi real-time, without capturing any non-music audio, whether that’s the weather report or private conversations.
Russell Chant, PPL’s Head of Distribution, said: “At PPL, we’re always working to ensure that performers, record labels and self-releasing artists are fairly and accurately paid for the music they create. This initiative with Audoo will complement our existing suite of advanced technological tools and public performance music usage data, offering us a further way to check that our distributions are as accurate as possible. We look forward to working with the Audoo team over the coming months.”
Ryan Edwards, Audoo founder and CEO, said: “This collaboration with PRS and PPL is a milestone in the evolution of the public performance royalty space, for creators, performers and rights holders, as well as licensees delivering an enhanced experience for customers through the joy of music played in public spaces. Audoo is a proud British business that has designed, developed and continues to manufacture all products in the UK, so it is particularly poignant to launch Audoo at home with global leaders PRS for Music and PPL following the successful impact in other territories.”
Tim Arber, PRS for Music, Director of Operational Improvement, said: “We are continually investing in new technologies and services to ensure we can pay out royalties more quickly and accurately, delivering the best possible service to members. We have been working with music recognition technology for many years and are excited to see how this collaboration with Audoo can support our ambition to pay out over £1 billion annually in the next few years. Helping businesses across the UK to report the music they play through smart data capture will be integral to reaching this milestone and maximising our members public performance royalties.”
