Shops, Bars and Royalties: How PRS for Music Is Making Payouts More Accurate

How public-performance royalties work

When recorded music plays in a commercial space in the UK, the business pays a licence fee. PRS for Music, the UK body representing songwriters, composers, and music publishers, collects that money and distributes it to rights holders.

The problem has always been in the detail. Instead of tracking every song played in every venue, collection bodies have typically distributed money using proxy data modelled on radio plays. As Soundtrack’s founder and CEO Ola Sars put it: “In most countries, public performance royalties are distributed based on proxy data and not actual usage.”

What is changing

PRS for Music is partnering with Soundtrack, a music streaming service built for businesses. It will receive play-by-play data showing exactly what music is played across around 7,000 UK premises, reducing its reliance on estimates where real usage data wasn’t available before.

PRS will begin using Soundtrack data in its royalty distributions from December 2026.

What this means in practice

If your songs are played through Soundtrack in UK venues and your work is properly registered with PRS for Music, you stand to receive a more accurate share of the public-performance pool, rather than an allocation based on radio approximations. Music outside mainstream radio formats has historically been underrepresented in those estimates, so more precise data should, in theory, help correct that imbalance.

One thing to note: this covers PRS distributions only. It’s separate from the system that collects for performers and recording rights holders when recorded music plays in public, and neither company has said anything about that system being updated.

The practical step to take now

Make sure your songs are registered. If you’re UK-based, register your compositions with PRS for Music. If you’re elsewhere, your local rights collection body almost certainly has a reciprocal agreement with PRS, so UK plays can still generate payments for you, but your work needs to be registered with accurate metadata.

Getting your catalogue set up properly and getting your music heard go hand in hand. Musosoup helps with the second part, connecting independent artists with the bloggers, playlist curators, and music press who can give your songs real exposure.

The short version

PRS for Music is replacing estimated data with actual track-by-track play data from 7,000 UK venues, feeding into royalty payouts from December 2026. If your songs play in shops and bars, make sure they’re registered so you collect what you’re owed.