What does PRS for Music do?
Under international law, creators and/or publishers of music have an intellectual copyright over their music; basically, a right to earn money from what they’ve written. Generally this money is collected in the form of a percentage of the money made from the use of that music, known as Royalties. When music is broadcast, performed in public or transmitted, this money is called Performing Royalties. PRS for Music is responsible for making sure these Performing Royalties are collected and passed on to creators and publishers who are members of its society. PRS for Music itself is funded by license fees from businesses who use the music. What happened? Google is currently in the process of renegotiating royalty payments and licensing with a number of companies YouTube has deals with. Google and PRS for Music were in the middle of negotiations for a new license when, on Monday 9th March, Google announced that it had decided to pull “all premium music videos” (ie. any official upload) from
