Setting the Record Straight with Gareth Kelly - Episode 29, The Last Safe Space

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:11

Welcome back to the Last Data Space. This is the data-driven, no-nonsense, Drake Talking podcast, all the way from Music Any Trust. I'm your host, Tony Coe, and I'm joined by someone whose work has already had a huge impact behind the scenes at MVT. Joining me today is my colleague, Gareth Kelly, rights management specialist, former PRS employee, touring musician, and someone who spent years understanding the relationship between artists, venues, licensing, and royalties from multiple sides of the industry. Is that fair?

SPEAKER_00 0:42

That sounds very grand, but yes.

SPEAKER_02 0:44

Well, Gareth, finally, finally, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today?

SPEAKER_00 0:49

Good. Yeah, yeah. Obviously it's hot, but yeah, we can get through it.

SPEAKER_02 0:52

Yes, if uh there's a slight glistening look on my face, it's because it's sweat. We are in a sweat box. Okay, so before we get into the rights management side of things, I really want listeners to understand where you come from musically, because this isn't someone who's just arrived from a corporate background. Um, you've spent years as a grassroots touring artist uh with your band Gert.

SPEAKER_00 1:14

Gert, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:15

And I nearly said Yurt, and I was like, that's definitely not how you pronounce it.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

No.

SPEAKER_02 1:19

That is a tent. For anyone who doesn't know the band, can you tell us a little bit about what type of music you play and what's your experience touring the grassroots live music circuit?

SPEAKER_00 1:28

Nice. I'm glad we're talking about the fun stuff.

SPEAKER_02 1:30

Yeah, I thought I'd start with your band.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, Gert have been around probably around the same sort of time that I started the PRS weirdly, um, and actually still has a band member in it from PRS uh weirdly as well. But yeah, we started in 2009, we are a sort of we started off as like a doom sludge band, if you want to call it that. Um, but 15 or near 16 years later, you know, we've changed quite a lot, we've evolved, but you know, generally heavy metal stuff with lots of screaming in, which is good. Um, yeah, we've we're grassroots through and through, so we're still playing the same sort of venues that we started at in London in in 2010. Really? Nice, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:14

And any sort of like favourites, you know, playing them as uh an artist?

SPEAKER_00 2:19

Absolutely, yeah. Like, well, our HQ almost is the black cart in Camden, you know, we love it there. Um, everything that goes on in our genre sort of takes place there. Um, I was involved in uh Desert Fest, the festival for about 10 years or about eight years. Um sort of managed doing the stage managing for uh for the festival every year, looking after the underworld there. So, you know, that's always Blackheart's always been like the hub for that. Um, but I also when Gert started, I tried my hand, like I think every young band should, in not that I was young then, but you know, uh new band, um, in promoting myself. So I started at the windmill in Brixton because I used to live around the corner. So um, so yeah, I went round, I used to literally go there and drink, and you know, I got knew Tim uh there. So I sort of just said to him, look, can I try and put show on? And he said, Yeah, why not? And then I was doing that for probably just under 10 years as well. Um, doing like a winter and a summer event. It was like a two-day festival with a barbecue, and that was all like Doom and Stoner bands that we um we used to like connect and get to know each other, and then the bands that knew each other would often we tour together and do bits and bobs. So so yeah, windmill and the black heart are absolutely my my you know faves. Although there's plenty of others, but those two will always stand out for me.

SPEAKER_02 3:48

Nice. Well, I think that's all kind of important context because you know you've lived the reality of being in a touring band, you know, you've loaded gear through probably lots of back alleys if you're talking about.

SPEAKER_00 3:58

I am a vocalist, so there's a lot of people who say that I haven't done that, but I have loaded.

SPEAKER_02 4:02

You don't carry things for the rest of the year.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

I do, I do, I absolutely do. My but my band might say I may disappear afterwards, but that's usually to do much.

SPEAKER_02 4:09

So you know sure. So hopefully you've done some loading in and loading out, but um, you know, you play tiny rooms, I'm sure, you play bigger rooms, you know, you but you always rely on the venue surviving, right? So you can continue doing your thing. What did that experience teach you about the grassroots sector before working for MBT?

SPEAKER_00 4:29

It's just difficult, isn't it? I guess. Like, but the community element of it is the most important thing. Like I say, with getting to work at Desert Fest and um, you know, doing my bits at the windmill, we it's how we got to meet people, and like I've got lifelong friends that you know, I've known for like 16 years of my life that are still friends who went to my wedding, you know, all that sort of stuff, and that's all from being at those venues and like meeting each other out there. Like it's you know, we we use community as a word like so often in what we do here, but it is so true. Like, yeah, like I say, some of my best friends uh I wouldn't have met had it not been in like some sweaty little club at two in the morning after playing.

SPEAKER_02 5:14

Yeah, I know it well, because I that's where I met all of my best friends. Exactly. Husband too. Because I think people outside of music often imagine artists um sort of just like emerge fully formed, and we feel that's not the case, right? Um actually grassroots venues are where careers are built and they're where a lot of these seams scenes form and where artists are able to fail um, excuse me, they're able to kind of like fail safely and experiment safely, and also, you know, like you just said, find their community. Um and you experience that first hand. So I just want to move on to when you started working for PRS, um, so you that feels like quite a big shift from touring band perspective, you know, because you've got the kind of like artist side of it, but then you've got the licensing side of it as well. How did that happen and what drew you into working for PRS in the first place?

SPEAKER_00 6:06

Well, I was I got completely by accident. I worked there, if I'm honest. It was a sales job, and I've got a sales background, I'm unfortunate to say, uh, because it's whatever you know, PRS or PPLPO as you'd like you to believe, it's a you know glorified sales job, that's what it was. So yeah, I oh I came in through sales background, but you know, the one thing that is really What were you selling before PRS? Oh god, everything bridal stuff. I was just saying the earlier, like we worked in yeah, bridal fashion, I've worked in windows, I've worked in health insurance, loads of glamorous subjects. But yeah, I was working for you know so you should be a good merch seller then. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know what I'm doing with that. Um a lot of people uh that that know Gert will know that merch is uh very shoved down people's throats quite severely, but rightly so, because that's how you make your money, you know. Like we we talk about this sort of stuff for hours, I'm sure, but you know, mu money's hard to come by in grassroots, and you know, merch is such a huge driving factor for you know for smaller bands that I really do focus a lot of my time and energy in that side of things.

SPEAKER_01 7:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:10

Um but yeah, like the good thing about PRS and PPL PRS is that there is a lot of people that gravitate there that are musicians or like care a lot about the music industry, and I think that's really important. Like the the place itself may not really uh align itself with music as much as it should. Um, but a lot of the people that work there are really into music or you know and want to be part of the music industry, it's just it's not necessary that um when you when you're in it. So so yeah, so it it yeah, it was a lot of that sort of as I as I worked and got you know met friends there and stuff, like it was really it worked quite nicely alongside the being in the band bit because well, like I said earlier, one of my band members I met because of PRS and and you know, and um yeah, and it's yeah, there is a lot of people that a lot of people there that care about what they do.

SPEAKER_02 8:10

That's nice to hear. Um, so for listeners who might not fully understand it, you know, what did your job at PRS involve day to day? Because it's one of those parts of the industry that many people rely on, but very few people fully understand.

SPEAKER_00 8:23

Yeah, so um I've worked all over within PRS, but it's always been within issuing the music license. So it's the public performance element. Whenever music's played or performed, a royalty's due. And um, yeah, and then there's a music license that's needed for that. So they have tariffs that would be applied to you know to whatever music you're using, and then a charge comes with that, and then you know, you apply those charges to an invoice, and the invoice goes out and so on and so forth. So yeah, it's um I've I started working with it in the smaller areas of like the individual businesses work, like issuing licenses to hairdressers and pubs and all that sort of stuff, and sort of then went to the bigger corporate stuff and then ended up in the live team, you know, just dealing with live music festivals and and venues, everything from like church halls all the way through to like Glastonbury's and O2 arenas. Um, and then I sort of went through various ups and downs there, but sort of worked my way up um to the point where I was managing the live team um just in time for them to move the public performance element out of PRS. Um and then in 2018 they created what is known now as PPLPRS, which is where the two parent companies of PPL, the Phone of Graphic Performance Limited and Performing Rights Society, PRS, came together and then they issued the one license with both on it. So I then went to um to PPL PRS and I carried on managing the live team for a few years there as well.

SPEAKER_02 10:05

Nice, thank you. And I think uh what's interesting about your background is that you weren't approach approaching it purely from like an administration or a corporate perspective, you understood the ecosystem from the artist side as well, which it sounds like uh quite a few of your colleagues at the time would have also have done that as you know, as performing artists themselves.

SPEAKER_00 10:23

Absolutely, yeah. Within the live, particularly in the live team, yeah, you know a knowledge of music is really really important. So like you'd have so many people that would be well into like touring bands and seeing what who bands are doing, what all out there. Um, it's just we wouldn't be we'd be doing the less glamorous side of you know applying tariffs and charging them for things that you know people wouldn't necessarily be overly chuffed about paying.

SPEAKER_02 10:47

Yeah, and did you feel that gave you a different understanding of how these systems like impact real people?

SPEAKER_00 10:54

I think so, yeah. Like I I had the pleasure of meeting our illustrious leader Mark David in 2015.

SPEAKER_02 11:02

Um the charity would have been an hour at like a year old.

SPEAKER_00 11:05

It was brand new, yeah. I was sort of warned about this gentleman Mark David when I met him, and uh, you know, we got on straight away.

SPEAKER_02 11:15

But you actually warned about him. Well, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:18

He's a lobbyist, isn't he? He's a lobbyist, apparently. But um, but yeah, you know, um we got on straight away because I think Mark could see that you know he knew I was in a band and I wasn't wearing a suit, you know, I was wearing a band t-shirt and I could talk about music and I think that meant that we got on quite well. And um the what could sort of spawned out of that and was a you know alongside of me doing my day job as a person in the band, is that you just wanted to make sure you were kind of doing right by the smaller venues and by grassroots music venues anyway. Yeah. Because I'd be going to them at the weekend, you know, and whether it be with all my mates or playing.

SPEAKER_01 11:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:59

Um, so you know, I that was always a bit of a thing that I wanted to focus on within my job, which is making sure that things were as fair as they possibly could within the structure of the tariffs, you know, and the rules of of PRS and and the way they do things. But, you know, and therein lies the problem is that you know there was only so much you could do.

SPEAKER_02 12:22

Yeah. Well, let's move on to you leaving PRS and joining MBT. So then comes what feels like a quite a major career pivot, some would say. You go from working within PRS to joining Music Venue Trust. What kind of drew you to that move? Did Mark plant that seed for you in 2015, or did it, you know, what happened?

SPEAKER_00 12:43

Well, no, like I say, I always liked grassroots music venues and paid attention. You know, I'd done a couple of venue stays whilst I was at uh PRS, you know, getting ripped apart on panels, maybe by Nathan of Brunel, but you know, um I'll always mention that to him every time I see him. But um, but yeah, I there was no seed planted about working here, you know. I always paid full attention to the music.

SPEAKER_02 13:06

So you were always engaged basically in the work.

SPEAKER_00 13:08

Yeah, I always loved what music venue trusted doing, always paying attention. But yeah, I was I sort of uh I left PPLPRS just to sort of go off and do something different, and um through doing that, Mark got wind of it and just said, Come and work for us. I want to make a job for you. And obviously, I was over the moon and just bit his hand off because you know it's I use the term dream job, but you know, it's not far off.

SPEAKER_02 13:34

I'd imagine some people would find the the jump from PRS to MVT quite unusual. Uh but actually it makes complete sense when you think about your background, you know, when you think about your band and and your community and everything, your friends. Um, you've seen how these systems work internally, but you've also seen the strain grassroots venues are under. So was there a moment where you realised you wanted to like actively work on behalf of venues rather than just like I go to them, I love them, I want them to survive, but I actually want to almost be like a defender of them or an advocate or well I get I guess always you know, I I working at the companies that we've mentioned and before working here, you know, for PRS and for PPLPRS, I'd see the struggles, yeah, you know, and I would see the what would happen when things went wrong, be it not paying their bills or not sending data in whatever it was that causes venues to you know to get into the trouble that they do.

SPEAKER_00 14:32

You know, so that was always a bit gutting, you know, and you'd see venues closing and well the you know, and it's not necessarily all the fault of music licensing, but you know, you'd see the strains that they're under and it's just you know it's just heartbreaking. So when when when uh when Mark mentions to us about, you know, or to me, sorry, that the the challenges that venues are sort of going through, and I get it, you know, it's yeah, like I say, I it's something I really want to get involved in because I can I feel like when being told about the the job and what I could fix and underst I sort of understood the where it was going wrong and and kind of really wanted to get stuck in. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_02 15:18

Yeah, it does, yeah. I think it's just um from the outside perspective, like I said, it seems like it is quite a big shift from going from one job to the other. And I understand your background, and I understand that you were so much more kind of like integrated with the grassroots ecosystem than maybe other people were. Um, but I think that uh going from being the the one that sends the invoice to the one that's almost like the activist. Um, I mean you're not you it's almost like you're a lawyer rather than Well, yeah, it seems to be a lot of legal chat going on.

SPEAKER_00 15:53

I didn't think I'd get involved in as much as I did. But no, yeah, I I just I don't think it's much of a shift, I guess. If not, like it's just on the right side of things.

SPEAKER_02 16:01

Yeah. Well, yeah. So I think it it makes sense to now talk about these inaccuracies that we've been talking about online um as part of the set the record straight uh campaign.

SPEAKER_01 16:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:11

Um I think it's important we talk about what you've actually been doing at MVT because you've had such a massive impact. You know, I've got it written down here that you identified 666,000 Ks worth of uh inaccurate PRS fees issued to grassroots music venues, but I think that figure might have gone up now. Well, yeah, it's nearly 700.

SPEAKER_00 16:31

Yeah, it's not far off.

SPEAKER_02 16:33

Yeah, that's that's an astonishing figure.

SPEAKER_00 16:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:36

I mean, you've probably been looking at it for quite a few years.

SPEAKER_00 16:40

I'm used to looking at numbers, so you kind of, yeah, the the the the importance of the number kind of you lose it somewhat, which I think is quite key with what everything that we're talking about today. But yeah, it's a staggering amount of money, it really is.

SPEAKER_02 16:56

Like not far off a million pounds, really. And a million is a big there's a lot of o's.

SPEAKER_01 17:01

Yeah, it's a lot.

SPEAKER_02 17:02

But you know, um, could you maybe explain what you started noticing? Like were there any patterns or you know, what were you seeing happen?

SPEAKER_00 17:09

Well, I think the big the big challenge that we have is th through what they call the estimated invoicing process. So that's where the bulk of well's where all of that number comes from, and it's where the bulk of my day-to-day ends up, you know, being focused on. Um yeah, it's estimated invoices. This is effectively where um they have licensing agents at PPLPOS that will try and get in touch with venues um to say you need to send in details to us to make sure you're licensed. And many cases it's lots of information about ticket sales and set lists and all this sort of stuff. And they have a uh certain amount of time that they contact people over generally about 28 days. Um, and then after that point, they have another like couple of weeks where they then keep trying, and then after a while, because they may not be hearing back from the venue, they've got no other choice, no other choice to um estimate an invoice. Um we all know what the day-to-day is like for owners of grassroots music venues, it's not like they sit there and they wait for an email to come in, you know, and they go, Oh, well, fantastic. I've got an email, I'll spend some time replying to that and getting all this stuff for them. You know, often it's one person doing everything, you know. We've said loads of before, like cleaning the floors at the end of the night and opening the doors when the day the night begins. But you know, the the challenge with that whole process is that often people are way too busy with so many other things that it may not end up happening.

SPEAKER_02 18:44

It's not on their sort of urgent list, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:45

Yeah, yeah. And then we know, you know, that's not great, that's not ideal, but that's life, you know. That's that's that how grassroots venues are run.

SPEAKER_02 18:53

And also when when um grassroots venues are earning so little and they've gone back down to skeleton staff, often you've got one person that's doing an awful lot of jobs. Yes, you know, and also working astonishingly uh amount of hours, and yeah, so it's it is tricky. Yeah because I I also I've been through this process as a venue um when I worked at um the Green Door store in Brighton.

SPEAKER_00 19:16

Yeah. And we received the venue, played there a few times.

SPEAKER_02 19:19

I said thank you, like I still uh live there. Live there, work there. But anyway, we you know we received a uh estimated invoice from PRS and it was huge. And I remember replying saying, This doesn't feel accurate. You know, we've got shows where we've got 20 people in the room. So your your your estimates are based on us being sold out every single night of the year.

SPEAKER_01 19:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:41

And um, and then we they we were then told that we had to go through the process of like writing up, you know, how many people came. And luckily we did keep that data.

unknown 19:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:50

So I would be like, okay, so the this day we had 25 people, this pit day we had 60, this day we had 170 or whatever. And um, and then so you'd send back all so this is a lot of work, you know, there's a lot of admin involved in getting that data. And so you'd send it all over, and then the they would just disappear for six months, and then suddenly they come back with another invoice with a different amount, but which was just another random sort of like attendance amount. It was very strange. Yeah. So there was a lot of like ping-ponging back and forth with different figures and that story is a common story, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:22

There's there's lots of problems that come with a business of that sort of type, you know, particularly the going quiet on the other end thing. That's a common occurrence where you know their staffing uh uh turnover, you know, is quite high. You know, that's the same with any sort of business that you know that has a sales sort of element, it's just natural to have that. Um, but yeah, you know, and that and and what you've described is almost like a little bit of a blessing for what I, you know, I don't rarely see, oh I don't often see that scenario where people are like, you know, they know what to do at the other end and it all makes sense and then they list it all out. You know, it's often they just go, What is this? This is a huge amount of money, I'm terrified, it's going in the bin, or I'll shove it into the bottom of my mind because I've got a HMRC bill, or you know, I've got shows that I've got sold 10 tickets of a you know a hundred cap venue or whatever. So, you know, it's often that they'll panic, go quiet, you know, disappear, um, and then that's when estimated invoices get sent. And often, again, um they will choose. There's a process, of course. There's a process to do it. Um, it's generally like the sort of what they call the average ticket price, which often is just the ticket price, um, and and they'll not have any data to go on about the popularity of the concert, you know, how many people turned up.

SPEAKER_01 21:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:47

And they also won't, you know, they won't, they haven't got the time to. So they will often just apply the capacity to the ticket price, and that will be what will be charged. We're talking about a specific tariff here. Not everything is charged in the same way, but in the instance of what they call the live popular tariff for ticketed concerts, you know, that's how they'll have to do it. So, you know, a big problem is that if you're having, you know, 100 gigs as part of a what they call a review period that are all maxed out in terms of, you know, attendance. But the reality is that I think we've got what average of 38% attendance in our venues at the moment. You know, or straight away that's two-thirds higher than what the bill should have actually been.

SPEAKER_02 22:36

So And also it's very much dependent on the season as well, because I mean, especially if you you um operate in a seaside town, the moment you hit summer, everyone's on the beach. Yeah. You know, they're not going into venues, they don't want to be inside a dark space, and yeah, festivals impact it. Then you've got January where everyone's like recovering from the you know expensive Christmas, so they're not coming out as much. So there has to be a deeper understanding of like how you know venues work and uh you know the peaks and troughs, but yeah, it's very tricky. And it, you know, I think it's really important to say that it's not about venues wanting to they're not refusing to pay artists. Um that's really important to clarify because grassroots venues absolutely believe that artists should be paid fairly and properly. Um, the issue here is accuracy, which is why we keep saying inaccurate fees, because we're not here to try and make savings, we're here to ensure that the right money goes to the right people. Um, it's about transparency and whether the systems in place are actually fit for purpose for grassroots music venues and also for artists.

SPEAKER_00 23:38

And that's a really good point, you know. The the challenge about people going quiet, you know, venue owners not being able to send data in that PRS needs in order to do these big, complex, you know, invoices, that's never going to go away. You know, and that and PPLPRS who would issue the licenses always say, we've tried everything that we can, we just can't get in touch with them. What else are we supposed to do? Fair enough. You know, I get it, and you know, luckily I'm here at the other end to be able to unpick it. But the answer to that is potentially looking at how a grassroots music venue operates and perhaps changing the tariff to make it a little bit more straightforward for someone who's rushed off their feet with all manner of different things to do and causing this, you know, this issue. So the you know, it's important to clarify you've got PPL, PRS that are issuing the invoices, but the tariffs that get charged are both PRS and then PPL individually that set those tariffs. So PPL PRS are doing a really difficult job of trying to administer something that doesn't protect, you know, doesn't work.

SPEAKER_02 24:49

Yeah, the mechanism feels a bit archaic now, doesn't it? It doesn't feel like it's been updated.

SPEAKER_00 24:54

Exactly. And it's PRS that have the ability to change that, you know, and come up with something that's fairer and better for the operators of our venues, which is something that we're obviously trying to push.

SPEAKER_02 25:05

Yeah. Um I think what's uh been so valuable about your role at MBT, you're someone who understands the internal systems there, um, and you understand licensing structures, but also understand the operational reality of venues.

SPEAKER_00 25:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:18

Probably even more so now since working at MBT.

SPEAKER_00 25:21

Absolutely, yeah. One thing that I've said is, you know, again, you're talking about the sales company thing. Back in on the other side, everything was very numbers driven. So it's all targets and all this sort of stuff. And the the scale of the numbers of the targets you'd have to achieve, it's easy to get lost in that and to not understand the humanity behind the people that you're issuing invoices to.

SPEAKER_01 25:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:44

And that was my biggest learning when I came into this was unlearning that whole piece about you know the value of you know money going into the system and seeing the people at the other end.

SPEAKER_02 25:59

Capitalism, baby.

SPEAKER_00 26:00

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. But you know, like obviously I much prefer meeting all the people at venues and understanding, you know, what they're going through and making their lives better than just putting, you know, hundreds of millions of pounds into a big pot. Yes, pot.

SPEAKER_02 26:18

Um, I'd also imagine that you spent long, you know, conversations speaking one-on-one to venues and and seeing how much stress or upset they're in.

SPEAKER_01 26:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:27

So, you know, that's gonna have an impact, isn't it? You know, that's one of the things that I r really noticed when I started working in crisis comms at MVT is trying to help venues when they're literally on the cusp of losing their livelihood, you know, and potentially sometimes that means losing their family home or their car or whatever, because all of the money's tied up together. It's it's um it's a hard part of the job.

SPEAKER_00 26:50

We have a lot of conversations like that. You know, the VST team have obviously spoken to you before, you know, we they they'd have some horrendous conversations, and I'm in the same world. You know, there's no secret now. We've had people that are, you know, have been in hospital, ill, yeah, that you know, have been chased for the lost family members, you know, yeah, going through divorces, all this sort of stuff, um, and trying to run a business at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 27:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:17

And I and a process to issuing an invoice doesn't take into account these things, yeah, life getting in the way, you know, and uh yeah, you know, it's it's it's a shame. Sad.

SPEAKER_02 27:30

It is sad. Um, for people listening who run venues or or like promote shows, um, or like work in live music in general, why does this work matter so much right now? Do you think that we're changing stuff? Or do you think stuff is on the cusp of changing?

SPEAKER_00 27:46

Well, I hope so. Yeah, I think one thing that I really want to get across is that I have a really good relationship now with PPLPOS. You know, that may not have existed in the same way before I came into this charity. Um, lucky luckily I knew them all, you know, and I was able to build a really strong relationship with them to fix a lot of this stuff. So that's a really big important thing.

SPEAKER_02 28:09

And credits, credit to them for being open to fixing it, I guess. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:12

You know, they've done a lot of work to ensure that a lot of these discrepancies are fixed. You know, there's just there's a lot of things, particularly when you get into the legalities of stuff, that is difficult and challenging. Sometimes they can't do things the way that we would like, but they have worked very hard to try and do the best that they can, and that's really key within what they can do, because I've mentioned it before, they are very restricted by what PRS are telling them to do, you know, and PPL are telling them to do. Um, but what I hope is that we will and there has been a lot of work going in in the last two years to to highlight this, is we want to address that grassroots music venues are so different that they need to be treated their own way. You know, and what I hope we are getting towards, not that there's many glimmers at the moment of it happening, but we are putting a lot of pressure on, is finding a way that our venues can have a particular tariff, a particular way to be charged, that will make life easier for everyone. You know, the venues want to pay, they want to pay what's fair, and they want to understand that that money's then going back to the right people, and ideally without it being a full-time job for them to do everything in the right way that PRS want it done. You know, that's that's the problem, um, or lot problems. Um, and we are being very vocal at the moment for good reason, but we want it all done in the right way.

SPEAKER_02 29:46

Well, we need it to change, don't we? Because 666,000 is not a small number.

SPEAKER_00 29:51

No.

SPEAKER_02 29:52

And you know, we're we're climbing closer and closer to a million, so it needs it needs to be sorted.

SPEAKER_00 29:57

With the cases that I'm working on at the moment, it's not far off a million once I get those ones resolved. You know, it's a lot of money. A lot of money. And it's fixable.

SPEAKER_02 30:07

So looking ahead, this is trying to be positive and solution-based. Um, what do you hope this work evolves into? What would success look like for you?

SPEAKER_00 30:17

I want a tariff, I want a grassroots music tariff. That's what MBT wants, you know. Um and it's also, you know, we've uh I would I say this every single day, you know, talk to people at PRS, to people at PPLPRS often. Um if this gets fixed, it makes their lives a lot easier as well, because a lot of the workload that they have is dealing with a lot of these queries and all these legal problems and stuff that we have to do at uh now. So I'm hoping that that at some point will be listened to and that they understand that a tariff is needed and is the sensible option and the way to be to get this resolved. So I want that, you know. We and we want a fairer way of ensuring that the money that is collected gets to the right people as well. You know, we don't have the greatest confidence that the venues that the money that the venues are paying are even getting to the right people because the sheer volume of people that start in the industry in grassroots music venues that will not be playing covers, will not be playing PRS repertoire, you know, will be playing their own material and they've yet to do anything with it. That's a huge amount. Huge amount. We think it's like what 20 to 30 percent of the acts that actually come into grassroots and music venues will actually be anywhere near PRS of interest, you know.

SPEAKER_02 31:46

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:47

Um so that's not not members, yeah, not members, or will be members. 20 to 30 percent we think are members, so you know 70 to 80 percent is not in within their repertoire. But the tariffs are built on the assumption that all music that goes on in venues is theirs to collect.

SPEAKER_02 32:06

And you've been doing a lot of work on trad music, yeah, right, haven't you? So there's a lot of different kind of like subcultures, yeah. I don't know if that's the right word, really, of different types of music, you know, like playing, you know, jazz music that's really, you know, really old or you know, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 32:23

Or improv, you know.

SPEAKER_02 32:24

Improv improv. I think that's kind of where I was going with the jazz. Jazz improv? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:28

It's huge, you know. We've got loads of jazz musicians here at MBS. Sea shanties. Sea shanties is another one, yeah. Trad music, you know, uh it's music that is hundreds of years old and not within their jurisdiction to, you know, to to claim for because they can't pay it out to anyone. It was never copyrighted in the first place. So yeah, you know, you see things like that where they just get charged, and there's no mechanism within the tariffs to pull that out and go, okay, actually, no, we won't charge you for that. Um so yeah, it's stuff like that. It's it's it's it needs looking into. Mark has made a very interesting point that when when these tariffs are created, or LP was created, like in 1988, or when it was looked at last, the music industry then, if you've got someone coming into a venue, you can pretty much guarantee they were PRS members, you know, because the only people that could get out on tour and and would have the money behind them to have a record and all that sort of thing would would likely be a PRS member as well. You know, it's it went hand in hand. But the last 20-30 years, you know, the music industry now, everyone's making music themselves. They often don't even know who PRS are because they're too busy trying to get enough money to do a three-track EP in their bedroom, you know, to get something out there. You know, it's a very, very different world. Um, and we think that their methods probably need to reflect the real world now rather than concentrating on a 1988 world, which was a long time ago.

SPEAKER_02 34:06

Yeah, a while a while ago. Yes. Um lastly, I just wanted to ask you how's your experience been working for Music Venue Trust so far?

SPEAKER_00 34:17

I love it, I think it's great. Yeah. Again, talking about community, isn't it? It's like everyone gets on really well with each other, we all know each other, we're all supportive of each other. Like, just yeah, when we go to venues day is the best way to sum it up. You know, we we we're in the room with all of the people that we help, you know, year in, year out, and how appreciative they are, and just yeah, and just how wonderful the community of people is, it's just great.

SPEAKER_02 34:44

Yeah, it is great. It just just because MVT is a very particular type of environment as well to work in, you know, it's very fast moving. As we've touched on, it can be quite emotionally charged sometimes, and you know, it's deeply community-led work. But yeah, I just wondered uh how you felt about working in MVT.

SPEAKER_00 35:00

Yeah, I absolutely love it. Like I say, it's a it wasn't a dream job, you know, working for somewhere where you can actually see a difference happening, particularly this year, you know, with all the wonderful projects that we're all doing. Like yeah, it's just it's just incredibly rewarding. And you're all lovely people as well.

SPEAKER_02 35:19

Oh, thank you. I was waiting for him to say that. Um, Gareth, thank you so much for joining me today. It's been so so good to talk to you about this. Um, I think that you know, I genuinely think conversations like this are really important because they reveal a lot of hidden infrastructure that people don't know about. Um, you know, people they see the gigs and the artists and and stuff and they don't always see the systems underneath. And this is quite an important one. So it hopefully it's something that we can improve and keep continue to talk to you about. And we do have some very big announcements coming up on this campaign specifically, so please keep your eyes peeled. Such a weird saying. Keep your ears to the floor. You know what I'm saying. Anyway, so this has been the last safe space. This is the podcast from MVT. Uh, my name's Tony. Don't forget that you can support us through the supporter circle, which you can find out about at www.musitvenutrust.com. Um, please stay engaged with our posts online.