Initiative to improve accuracy of public performance royalties

A new music industry initiative is hoping to drive more accurate royalty payments for artists and songwriters from public performance.

Recognise the Music is a joint project between the Music Venue Trust, tech start-up Audoo, the Featured Artists Coalition, the Association of Independent Music and the Music Managers Forum.

It aims to help venues check their performing rights organisation licence fees are distributed to artists and songwriters with the upmost accuracy.

Unidentifiable and inaccurate royalty payments are widespread issues in the music industry, with Audoo estimating that over £2bn in global revenue cannot be properly tracked. This results in many artists missing out on revenue due to inaccurate data collection and reliance on estimates or radio play.

Around 400,000 venues in the UK hold a performing rights organisation licence and are being encouraged to sign up at Recognise the Music’s website.

Audoo has developed an Audio Meter, which fits into a standard electrical socket, that can recognise what music is playing and securely fingerprint it, to ensure the data is captured.

“Venues don’t need to report, everything is automated. The music fees they have to pay flows straight through to the artists. It’s important because everyone is paid accurately and correctly,” Audoo CEO Ryan Edwards says.

“Recognise the Music is really special to us because it does exactly what it says it will. It recognises music to ensure that all artists of all shapes and sizes have their music recognised and that they’re paid equally and correctly.”