About Performing Right Society (PRS) for FE Colleges
Who are PRS?
The Performing Right Society Limited is the UK association of composers,
songwriters and music publishers, created in 1914. PRS is a non-profit making
organisation, that administers the performance right in their members music, in
relation to the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
Who are CEFM?
In April 2002 the Performing Right Society appointed The Centre for Education &
Finance Management Ltd (formerly The Centre for Education Management) to act as
agent for the collection of royalties from the Further Education sector.
CEFM provide support and consultancy services to schools and have been working
with PRS since 1995. Initially in the collection of royalties from the Grant
Maintained schools sector, and then in 1999 expanding the relationship to
collect annual royalties from all state and independent schools in the UK.
Why do we need a licence?
The performance right in a piece of music is the right of the creator to control
where and when their work is used. Every time a piece of music is performed in
public, the creator is entitled by law to charge a fee for that use. The
performance right as granted by the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, is a
transferable commodity that can be assigned by the creator of a work to an agent
who will act on their behalf.
It would be impractical for all concerned if every time you wanted to perform a
piece of music you first had to track down the creator to negotiate a fee and so
for this reason creators of music assign their performance right to the
Performing Right Society. The Performing Right Society then issue licences to
premises where music created by their members is heard in public, such as pubs,
clubs, restaurants, shops, schools, municipal buildings and so on.
Based on statistical surveys and information received from both users of music
and PRS' members, the fees collected by PRS are distributed to members on an
annual basis. In many cases this is the creators' only source of income and
allows them to continue creating music. Unlicensed music use denies the creator
their income and may cause some to cease creating music altogether.