Blog: From Sheffield To Alaska

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Yesterday was PRS STATEMENT DAY, that most wonderful time of the year that is SO wonderful it can happen twice in the same year. Or, for a lot of us, none times in the same year.

For LO! it is the day when The Performing Rights Society send you money (loosely) (sometimes very loosely) based on the amount of airplay you have had, whether that be from radio shows, telly, jukeboxes, gym workout sessions, or a variety of other ways to hear music publicly that seem a bit made up but almost definitely probably aren't. You have to get over a certain threshold of CA$H to GET a statement, but when you cross that line you get a full list of ALL the plays that PRS has collected money from.

This is almost always a DELIGHT because you often find all sorts of places that your music's been played that you had no idea about - for instance, I once discovered that we'd had national radio play in SPAIN because of a PRS statement. THIS time I around I was utterly AMAZED to find that almost the entire payment - and the reason we had got over the Getting A Statement Threshold at all - was because ALASKAN AIRLINES had been playing Thank Goodness For Christmas on their aeroplanes!

Alaskan Airlines do make a big deal about Christmas, so I ASSUMED they put us on some sort of Festive Playlist for the season, and I am thus DELIGHTED to imagine rugged Alaskan types zooming through the air with US ringing in their ears! HOORAH!

I was also very pleased INDEED to see that BBC Radio Sheffield appear to STILL be using Good Cooking as the theme for the cooking section on their breakfast show, going by the number of times PRS say they've played it anyway. I must say I find this all rather WONDERFUL. When one releases a song into the wild, as like what I have done so many times, you have no idea AT ALL who is going to listen to it or where they're going to play it - or indeed IF anyone's going to - so it's fantastic to discover these strange uses that they have been put to. I must say I fully support it, and if any OTHER airlines or local radio shows want to follow suit I would have no problem with that whatsoever!

posted 16/10/2024 by MJ Hibbett

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Comments:

The UK threshold for Performing Rights payments is... thirty quid. "Artists Against Success" is still living up to its mission statement, I see
posted 16/10/2024 by have you considered busking on the Tube? it's tax free!

Thirty quid TWICE A YEAR!
posted 16/10/2024 by MJ Hibbett

Oh, wait... "Once a year, in the October main distribution, we lower the threshold to £1." So, less of a success, then. https://www.prsformusic.com/what-we-do/paying-our-members
posted 16/10/2024 by you went into music for the groupies, not the greenbacks.

what is the point of a cookery show on the RADIO? it's worse than listening to the cricket.
posted 16/10/2024 by if I can't see Nigella I'm not interested.

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