PRS For Music has submitted its official financial documents in the UK, and there’s a few factoids of interest for the wide business.
Most of the document is in line with the collection society’s annual report issued earlier this year, with revenue (collections) at Performing Right Society Ltd. climbing to £537.4m, and licensing/admin expenses growing by over £3m to £79.9m.
There is some extra detail when it comes to PRS’s staffing costs – and what it’s spending on employees.
According to the filing, PRS’s average headcount actually dipped very slightly last year, down from 615 to 611.
That meant the average wage across those 611 employees stood at £51,620 – compared to 2014’s average of £48,374.
The annual remuneration of PRS boss Robert Ashcroft jumped up by more than £200,000.
Ashcroft’s remuneration reached £989,000 in 2015 – including a deferred bonus of £257,000 – up from £765,000 in 2014.
Another interesting area of the PRS financials covers the money it’s loaned new pan-EU collection project, ICE.
Also headed up by Robert Ashcroft, ICE is run in conjunction with Sweden’s STIM and Germany’s GEMA, and aims to “encourage both the aggregation of repertoires for pan-European licences and the elimination of parallel processing against incompatible works databases”.
It is split into three departments:
- ICE Operations – providing matching and processing services;
- ICE Services – providing middle-office services including invoicing, legal support and business intelligence analysis;
- ICE Licensing – providing consolidated licensing of PRS for Music, GEMA and STIM’s multi-territory online rights.
According to the PRS filing, the UK collection society has loaned ICE £7.8m to help it set up ICE Operations and ICE Services.
This money is due to be repaid with interest by the new business in the coming years.
Music Business Worldwide
