Hello.
I’ve just registered with PRS and have a few questions regarding my older tracks. I’m not sure whether I should register them. People have bought a license for this music, the license lasts forever, and the license states that it’s royalty-free, non-PRO music. I wonder what will happen if this music suddenly shows up in PRO’s and the PRO’s start to demand money from customers who already licensed this as Non-PRO music? Isn’t it a kind of stab in the back for them?
Thanks for any valuable input. Cheers!
The PRO will take money from the broadcasters and not the customers. The broadcasters are expected to pay royalties but it’s up to you to register them. I’m with the PRS and I can’t back claim on previous usage if they weren’t registered at that time but definitely register for future use.
I am pretty sure PRS pay you if you notify them about a track that was broadcast within the last 3 years. Any further back than that and the money is gone.
Ok I’ll check. I think it would’ve needed to be registered first. So I can’t register something now that’s been here for 3 years and expect to get the back payment I don’t think. I’m adding tracks to tunesat so if something comes up I can query it, but I’ve only registered a lot of my tracks recently.
PRS seem to keep hold of money for 3 years to wait and see if it gets picked up.
There is somewhere on the site where they have a list of ‘uncollected royalties’ where you cam search if you have anything in your name.
But if you have some proof of the broadcast happening in the last 3 years and haven’t been paid then hit them up.
Tunesat only shows new uses of your music after you uploaded it.
Ahh, hmm not sure if I’ll be able to find old broadcasts then. I’ve had quite a few broatcast licenses over the last few years. Hopefully if tunesat finds a show or ad that’s still being shown there will be royalties too from the previous years. If not I’ve got it set up to work well in future so it’s a learning process.
One more tip, don’t worry about putting metadata into tunesat. Just uploading the final audio file works fine.
Thanks for the quick response, guys.
Sorry, maybe I wasn’t clear enough. Yes, I’m perfectly aware that it’s the broadcaster who pays performance royalties to the PRO’s. I just want to know whether the customers who already licensed my music as non-PRO/royalty-free in the past will risk getting into any sort of trouble when I register it with PRO.
I think the only problem that could happen is if they are the broadcaster’s of your music.
So say they own a cafe and play your music in the background for all of the customers to enjoy. In that situation they will be fine playing your non PRS music. However, if you then register the track and PRS somehow discovers that, what they think, is a registered track being piblicly performed, PRS will end up charging the broadcaster.
Cafe/Bar/Live Venue
Doubt it would happen but who knows.
Ah got ya. I registered mine all recently, including older ones. I think there’s a very small chance it could land you in trouble and I can’t think of too many situations where it would. worth it to collect future royalties though…