PRS For Music Partners With Soundtrack To Improve Public Performance Royalties

PRS for Music has partnered with business music streaming platform Soundtrack to improve the accuracy of royalty payments to songwriters, composers and music publishers by tracking music played across commercial establishments in the UK.

Under the partnership, PRS for Music will receive track-level playback data from approximately 7,000 premises using Soundtrack’s platform. These include retail outlets, bars, hotels and other public spaces, with businesses such as Uniqlo, Dr. Martens, Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, Kiehl’s, Joe & The Juice and TAG Heuer among its users. The UK Parliament also uses the service.

The data will help PRS for Music identify the music being played in these establishments and incorporate actual usage information into its royalty distribution process. The organisation plans to begin using Soundtrack’s data for royalty payments from December 2026.

The move is expected to reduce its reliance on estimated or comparable usage data in cases where direct playback information has previously been unavailable, potentially making royalty distributions more accurate.

“Our focus at PRS is simple: to pay our members as accurately and as quickly as we can,” said Ben McOwen Wilson, CEO of PRS for Music.

He added that access to actual music usage data from thousands of additional businesses would help the organisation better reflect how music is used in commercial settings and ensure the value generated by creators reaches them.

Soundtrack Founder, CEO and Chairman Ola Sars said the partnership would bring greater accuracy to public performance royalty reporting, where distributions in many markets continue to rely on proxy data rather than verified music usage.

The platform provides usage and ownership information from a catalogue of 150 million songs, supported by licensing agreements with thousands of rights holders.

The partnership marks another step in PRS for Music’s efforts to strengthen music usage tracking through technology and industry collaborations, with the aim of improving royalty identification, accuracy and payment timelines for its members.