In April 2024 we reported on legal action launched by Blur drummer Dave Rowntree against collecting society PRS for Music. His claim, issued through the UK’s Competition Appeal Tribunal, focused on how PRS handled ‘black box’ royalties – money collected for songs with wrong or missing metadata, blocking payouts to the rightful songwriters.
The case made waves, because it challenged an important aspect of how PRS for Music does business, with the original filing claiming that these royalties were being paid to publishers based on their market share, rather than to individual songwriters.
This week the Tribunal published its ruling, and it fell in PRS for Music’s favour. “The fact that one method of distribution may be considered preferable does not, in itself, mean that exercising a choice as to distribution is unfair or abusive,” was one of its key findings.
It also found that Rowntree and his lawyers had “not identified a sufficiently credible or plausible method for assessing damages as it is prima facie unknowable what proportion of Black Box royalties are owed to songwriters or the extent to which these royalties are impacting songwriters more than publishers”.
Rowntree’s application for a ‘collective proceedings order’ – formally certifying him to bring the case as a class action on behalf of fellow songwriters – was thus rejected. “The Tribunal considers it is doubtful that the cost-benefit of the proceedings favours certification. There may also be other means within the PRS to resolve the dispute,” ruled the Tribunal.
PRS for Music has welcomed the news, as you’d expect. “No evidence was provided to support the suggestion that PRS’s distribution policies are unfair, nor was a plausible alternative put forward,” said the society in its statement.
“It has always been our position that these allegations were based on a fundamental misrepresentation of our policies and operations, which has been fully vindicated in this judgment.”
When he originally filed the case, Rowntree claimed that “musicians’ royalties, perhaps to the tune of hundreds of millions of pounds, have been paid to the wrong people… because of bad data and processes”.
The ruling suggests that his next move may need to involve working through PRS for Music’s internal procedures to pursue these issues and identify ways to resolve them. But as and when he comments, we’ll bring you an update on that.
