Thom Yorke among 18 songwriters questioning PRS for Music's costs

Thom Yorke is one of 18 UK songwriters who have written to PRS for Music asking why it holds back so much of the royalties it collects to cover its running costs, Bloomberg News reported on 7 October. Paul McCartney and Elton John are the other two named.

PRS collects performing-rights royalties for British songwriters, composers and publishers, from concerts, bars, clubs, shops, television and radio, and paid out £1.02 billion to them in 2024. The letter, sent the week before Bloomberg's report, asks for a review of how songwriters are paid and how the society works out its expenses, citing growing concerns about the transparency, accuracy and overall representation of members' interests². Songwriters' livelihoods, it warns, depend on it.

PRS says it has already met the signatories' representatives. Its reply points to the work of collecting data from hundreds of thousands of businesses and matching it against millions of individual works.