Getting Royalties Right with Ryan Edwards - Episode 30, The Last Safe Space

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:11

Welcome to another episode of The Laugh Safe Space. I'm Mark David, I'm CEO and founder of Music Menu Trust. I'm I'm sitting in for Tony this week, who's decided to take the day off and go to the beach. Or she might just be sitting the other side of that camera, who knows? And I'm joined for this, I guess this is what you might call a special, really. This one is um about songwriter royalties. Don't turn off yet, it gets much more interesting, um, especially in the grassroots sector, but really broader than that. Um, and obviously the dreaded three initials uh PRS uh for music and their role in collecting songwriter royalties and distributing them in the grassroots sector. So um we're gonna get very into the meat of this discussion, and we have a reasonably big announcement for you as well. Um, so please stay tuned. Um, I'm gonna quickly introduce my guests in this special podcast. So just to my left here, I have Ryan from Owdo, uh, or or do, depending on how you want to say it. Hi, Ryan. Yeah. Which one should we go for?

SPEAKER_01 1:14

I I go with or do, but I don't mind. Whatever's best for you. Aldo sounds like we're putting it on a bit, doesn't it? It does, yeah. It sounds quite northern as well.

SPEAKER_02 1:20

So I didn't mind that bit a bit. And then I'm also joined by Gareth, who is our uh rights management specialist at MVT. And probably immediately I should say, Gareth, uh, the fact that we have to employ at Music Venue Trust an organization that represents venues, we have to employ you, gives you an indication of quite how serious this problem is. We're raising money from the public and brands and our partners so that we can employ you because rights management in the grassroots sector I would characterize as doesn't work.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

Yeah, absolutely. But be clear, I'm very thankful for a job. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:03

So um some of you may be new to this conversation, a lot of you will have seen the activity that we've well, certainly you hopefully you've seen the activity we had recently on our social media accounts where we have been telling the direct stories of the venue operators who frankly are being harassed.

SPEAKER_00 2:24

Is that a fair in yeah, in some extreme cases, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:29

Yeah, um, and certainly not being supported in any way by the existing system of songwriter royalty collection and distribution. Um those are very personal stories. I I don't think we should get into those anymore, but I think everybody can see when those are the outcomes, when very serious personal outcomes are happening to people. Frankly, when venues are closing because of this issue and the effect it has on people's mental health, that's plainly not good enough, and something does need to be done. That been beeped at that conversation. Um goes back to our set the record straight campaign, um, which was really asking look, everybody in the grassroots sector understands how important songwriter royalties are to grassroots songwriters, to the artists. I mean, every penny really matters at this level, and far too much of it is not ending up in the hands of the people or in the bank accounts of the people that it actually does belong to, the people who wrote the songs. So this gets raised again and again, doesn't it, Gareth? That in some way we at Music Value Trust uh are trying to take money away from songwriters. In fact, the reverse is true. Yeah, we are actually trying to get the money that belongs to songwriters in the hands of the correct songwriters, and we also don't want money taken out of a show to go somewhere where it can never be distributed. That just is is insane, frankly. So, I mean, and people who have seen I mentioned PRS for music already, um, people may have seen my own personal Substack, which just to be clear, is not the Music Menu Trust Substack, it's the things I write. Sometimes I wake up on a Sunday morning and I'm really angry about something. That doesn't mean the rest of the team are, although in this case, everybody's really angry about it, which is why it ended up being a four-part series. And in that Substack, we try to describe, or I try to describe the problems that frankly, Gareth, you've been working with us for it's nearly two years now.

SPEAKER_00 4:34

Two years in July, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:35

Two years in July. And let's have a sense of the scale of those problems. I mean, mainly you've been working on or the bit you can work on is the estimated bill part. So where PRS are demanding money that app just isn't is based on nothing at all. It's just a made-up bill.

SPEAKER_00 4:56

Yeah, so that's a majority of my workload. You know, when when someone comes I'm on the front line in that I work closely with the venue support team here, which we've been on the podcast before. But yeah, they um the venues will come direct to me, and you know, eight times, nine times out of ten, it's about an estimated bill that's been received. Um, you know, yeah, they're over over the odd way over what is expected, people panic and don't know where to go. So I'm helping with that to get an understanding of how the charges are built and you know, and and why they're as high as that.

SPEAKER_02 5:30

And those those bills, when you've looked at them in all those cases, I think it was above 200% more than it should be. So that's the average now. That's the average. So we're looking that when uh when a venue is if a venue can get the information that is demanded by the thing called the music license, yeah, if they can get the information and they can submit that, the bill that comes back would typically be a third of a bill that turns up when peerers are estimating it.

SPEAKER_00 5:59

Yeah, uh quite well, yeah. I say half in a lot of cases. You know, like I say, the average is about 200%, but a lot of them it does seem to be half of what is actually owed.

SPEAKER_02 6:11

Um so I mean there's there's a there's a straight problem straight away. Yeah. It can't how can you have an estimated bill that's that far out of sync with the bills that have been um you know, we're not going to talk about individual cases, but one of the cases that's been covered on our social media has been that somebody who paid every bill they were ever sent, even whether they were right or wrong, gets ill, doesn't answer, and receives a bill for three times the amount they've ever paid in the past. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. There has to be something fundamentally wrong with the system that throws up. I mean, it's bad that that person was ill and actually was in hospital, but you know, I I that just seems like a an estimated bill department is out of control.

SPEAKER_00 6:53

Yeah, I think a lot of the the logic behind it is that they will often look at the ticket price, what the ticket price is pick not necessarily the highest one, but what they say is the average one, and then it'll be based on the maximum capacity. So, you know, I don't know how many venues out there can boast that they've got a full house every single night.

SPEAKER_02 7:15

Well, the uh the average capacity across the year is is 38%. Exactly, yeah. So that would actually, I mean, that ties pretty closely to the kind of overcharge we're seeing. Yeah, yeah. If it's running at an average 38% capacity, then okay, and then how many cases are you dealt with in these two years?

SPEAKER_00 7:30

Well, it's not always about estimates, but there's well over, you know, hundreds we're talking about. But I think we're over a hundred in terms of ones that have say or sorry, found discrepancies on the billing on. And uh yeah, it's a lot of money. Do you want to know how much? Yeah, go on in. It's just shy of 700 grand at the moment.

SPEAKER_02 7:50

Um shall we pause there while we all look straight down the camera and say 700,000 pounds? So that's just the estimated overcharging. Yeah. That's got nothing to do with whether they're accurately matching the information. That's just money they were trying to take out of the grassroots sector that plainly could never be theirs because the people who paid ticket money didn't exist.

SPEAKER_00 8:18

Yeah, if no one's uh objecting to that, and there's many cases where people have just panicked and paid, then yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:26

And let's Lango, let's cover that bit as well. Panicked and paid. Why would somebody panic and pay?

SPEAKER_00 8:32

A lot of people don't understand how it works. Yeah, you know, I I don't know anyone who's had the joy of looking at any of PRS's tariffs, but you know, they're very complicated. Um, I know they'd probably argue and say it's not, but it's lot, you know, there's so much detail in them, a lot of business jargon is used, and a lot of people that are you know panicking about not just PRS bills, you know, or PPL PRS bills, you know, often it's just yeah, they don't know what to do. They're like doing headlights and then they just freeze and the problems start.

SPEAKER_02 9:03

And then the I mean, I don't think we would be revealing any secrets to anybody who knows this sector or or knows music, but they are by default heavily litigious. And so, in fact, in again in our social media stuff about venue operators and the problems they faced, few of them have had CCJs, county court judgments taken against them for estimated bills. Yeah. So they're then being asked to pay a bill that's wrong and is demonstrably wrong because the estimate was over top, and PRS have just defaulted to bringing in lawyers to try and get money that doesn't belong to them. PPL PRS, yes. PPL PRS, yes. We should be clear that there's an there's kind of the joint venture PPLPRS is the enforcement agency of the tariffs that PRS for music and PPL individually create under something called the music license.

SPEAKER_00 9:57

Yeah, they're the licensing arm, so they'll do everything for both PRS and PPL and use the tariffs that the both parent companies created.

SPEAKER_02 10:05

So yeah, but you're I think I think your relationship with PPLPRS is probably better than they are with PRS for music, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 10:12

Oh, it's great, yeah. No, just to be very clear on that, I do work very closely with PPL, POS, and uh the team there are people that I work with for years anyway, so I know them well. But you know, that we do have these problems, but they have worked hard to keep that really good relationship there. And I have very regular catch-ups and we work through them all, but you know, we both you and I have said to them you know, the reasons why venues have these problems, why they shut down, you know, and why they panic. Um, you know, and a lot of it is out of PPLPOS's hands because they are the ones that are force, but they're the front line, aren't they?

SPEAKER_01 10:50

Yeah, they're the guys that have got to go and sit and speak to someone, yeah, of course. Whereas the parent company ultimately collecting and distributing.

SPEAKER_02 10:57

So yeah, so they're made in the well and also very important is setting the tariffs, yeah, yeah, of course. So yeah, let's just wrap this part of like the explainer up. Um most of this results from a settlement in between 2015 and 2017 on something called tariff LP. Yeah. So that's tariff live performance, but in fact, that's not the only problem we see in our sector. We also see problems with tariff P.

SPEAKER_00 11:25

Yeah, the puppy tariff.

SPEAKER_02 11:26

Because it's just a blanket license and actually nobody's really paying attention to what's being played played. Yeah, absolutely. Except on sampling, which I mean will come to you in a second.

SPEAKER_00 11:35

Well, the the the tariff P stuff is is only gets paid out based on uh the PRS members submitting. Submitting uh so if there's no set this that's another amount of money they don't know what to do with it.

SPEAKER_02 11:46

Correct, yeah, yeah. So it should explain that in the tariff LP review from the point of view of the grassroots venues, only ever got concluded because PRS sent us a letter which committed them to changing all of this and then did not change any of it. So the terms and conditions we have now in 2026 are exactly the ones that they promised in 2017 that they would change in 2018 and report to us in 2019, and in fact they did. Uh are we allowed to swear on this podcast? Uh precisely fuck all. Okay. So nine years of nothing, and we are still PPLPRS are having to deal with a tariff that essentially doesn't work in this sector.

SPEAKER_00 12:40

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:41

Okay. In the middle of all that, uh in the middle of all my substacks, we I I hope everybody realizes means of any trust, we're not actually interested in just whinging and moaning about things. We actually think, generally speaking, if you see us talking about something on a podcast like this, it's because we think there are solutions that things could be done differently and and better and more efficiently for everybody concerned. So the weight on venues we f we feel can be removed. Better distribution can happen if the data was better. In the middle of all those substacks, I mentioned or do. Um so Ryan, you're the CEO and founder. I think probably at this point you should tell us what is how does it work, what does it do? I mean, the first thing you should probably do, which will shock everybody, is show us what it is, physically what it is, yeah, because I think that will will shock people to start with. Yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_01 13:41

So should we just take a look at the unit? So I'll hold it up to the camera. So um, this is the audio audiometer, and um it's it's fascinating actually being here because you've you've almost taken me back 20 years because you know I started, I signed a record deal at 19 in a band, and I replayed in many of the venues that you worked with. Um, always original material, definitely never submitted a set list, definitely never was a PRS member at the at the early stages until, of course, we signed our first record deal. And um, what what happened about um seven, eight years ago, I was walking through one of the department stores on Oxford Street and heard one of my songs playing, which was quite funny because my wife was like, Oh, I haven't heard this song for ages, and then there was the realization of oh that's me, seriously. And then she said, Oh, how much are you being paid? And I'm like, that like Prada Bag is not gonna pay for that. Like, forget it, like you know, um, and and I've I've spent, you know, kind of since since music, and you know, sadly the band didn't work out like like so many. I spent most of my I call it my professional career in digital and data. So I tried to track that that broadcast of my song in a in a department store, you know, which of course is a public performance play, to to them receiving a payment, and that payment didn't happen. Now it was a single play in a single department store, which is very hard to track, but generally I was like, well, it must it's being played here, it must be being played elsewhere. I would expect to see. It could be on a playlist somewhere. Exactly, yeah. And and and of course it just it just didn't come through. And it sent me on the mission to go, well, how how do a PRS, a PPL, or any, you know, for the UK or anybody else around the world know? And you know, that deep dive ended up, you know, eight years ago reading articles by you, reading articles by lots of other people going, you know, it's just not flowing back, and and how can we do that? So I guess fast forward to it to now we've created the audio meter, which we spent the last few years building and developing.

SPEAKER_02 15:30

I'm gonna say what everybody else is thinking.

SPEAKER_01 15:32

Yeah, gone. That seems too small. Well, that's and that was actually that was the joy, and that was the point of it. You know, we went out and looked at the market about was there anything out there that was a direct competitor? There wasn't really anybody else doing this. And my whole point here was this has to be tiny, unobtrusive, completely forgotten. You know, we we we joke, and it's probably a music industry term because it's like it's the little black box that's ironically helping with with black box as well. And and everything that we did from an engineering point was keep it small, just take up a single socket. Um, and actually, just interesting stats like so for a venue to have one of these plugged in, even at today's electricity rates, it's costs sub 50 pence a year to run. So we're not really asking them to contribute anything outside of a power socket. Let me just take them to course.

SPEAKER_02 16:22

Oh, in the box, you it looks like so. Is this piece of microphone?

SPEAKER_01 16:26

Is that so so on the front there's a microphone array? So we have eight microphones, so this will capture all the different audio reflections that are going out. So um, yeah, so if there's lots of noise coming from one corner or one area where it's all reverberating around the room, they're all at slightly different angles. And then on the bottom we have. So yeah, so on the bottom, should we show it? Yeah, we have um a USB and a and a jack plug as well. So, particularly for live, if we can get a feed from a desk, um always better just because there's so many variables in live. And when you put variables with noise and junting and you know, drinking, flying around and things like that, it just helps us get a much, much cleaner fee. So, yeah, so yeah, and what we find is once once these are in, they are they're generally forgotten. So, you know, we are as far afield as Australia and New Zealand in lots and lots of venues across those two great nations. Um so it listens.

SPEAKER_02 17:15

Yes. I'm I'm just gonna make sure everybody understands it. So it listens, yeah, it has to be plugged into the internet or it's got its own.

SPEAKER_01 17:22

No, so it has its own SIM connection as well. So we have what we call an eSIM built on board. Um so yeah, so we we get to I know, yeah. Yeah, well, it's that it goes you go back to that thing, you know, my iPhone's here, there's more there's more processing power in that than the you know the Apollo 11 mission. So it's you you can you know get technology related small. So what the what the audio meter, the physical hardware, does is it it captures the audio. Uh in real time, we create what we call a digital fingerprint. So essentially that audio in split second is recorded is is transferred into zeros and ones. Uh, and the reason that we do it that way is we never store the audio because we're also conscious in some of the environments that we're in, people may be having personal and private conversations, or this could be at the corner. We don't want that. Nobody wants us to have it, so we don't touch it deliberately. That fingerprint then, via the SIM card on board, and it works with all the major phone networks in the UK. Um, we just latch onto whatever has the best signal available where we are. Um uh particularly difficult when it's a basement club, so we can use Wi-Fi in that scenario, you know, where you don't get mobile signal. But then that sends that to our cloud. And in our cloud, we've we've got essentially every single song that is released on a DSP service. So if you can find it on Spotify, Apple Music or Discord. Yes, a streaming platform. So if you can find that song on there, we have that as a reference file. And then that's when we go for the matching. So if it's recorded music pre-recorded, of course, you match it one for one and you go, yes, it was this exact sound recording, and this is what it was. If it's a live performance, then we tend to look at three things. We'll look at lyrics, we'll look at um rhythmic kind of repetition, and we'll look at melodic repetition as well. And of course, that can be within a vocal pattern, within a guitar, you know, bass riff, etc. And we pull all of that together and go, hey, and um and actually what we typically do is give a certainty percentage as well. So um we we work to a tolerance normally of around 80%. So if we think something, if we we go, we're 80% sure that that was I don't know, a cover of Wonder Wall. Um, because if it was me, it would be completely out of tune and it would be really bad. But we go, yeah, we're pretty sure we got the lyrics and the melody looks pretty pretty close.

SPEAKER_02 19:29

Because obviously there, you know, people will do, I mean, if Gareth Gareth was covering Wonder Wall. I think we do very different covers.

SPEAKER_01 19:36

Yeah, I was just saying differently hanging with the mind.

SPEAKER_02 19:39

Well you're saying is because the lyrics are in there, right? I mean, because obviously part of the copyright belongs to lyrics anyway. Exactly. So if you are using the lyrics but you've almost completely changed the tune, there is still a lot of.

SPEAKER_01 19:47

Then you can still go, yeah, look, it it you know, it looked like Wonder Wall. It looked, it looked and it sounded like Wonder War, therefore we believe it's Wonder Wall.

SPEAKER_02 19:53

If any if any piece of music is on any digital streaming platform, so we're talking Spotify, Apple, Deezer like Deezer. Yeah, uh Tidal as well, yeah, yeah. Any of those.

SPEAKER_01 20:04

Bandcamp, I would have thought Bandcamp's button. I I need to check, but I'm pretty sure because what happens is when the music either goes through the distributors or to those upload streams, we have we have a feed out of them essentially. So yeah, generally when it gets distributed in, we get it.

SPEAKER_02 20:16

And then once it's recognised that the output is it can tell you the name of the song. Yep. So songwriter.

SPEAKER_01 20:22

So yeah, so we we have song title, songwriter, uh, or the artist, the recording artist, because again, we're trying to match it to a level of recording and saying that. Uh, and then the all-important ISWC code, so which is the international standard uh writing code, so we can say, yeah, it was this composition as well. Obviously, if it's a recorded version, then it has the IRC code as well because of the code.

SPEAKER_02 20:42

Okay, so recorded, I'm gonna guess probably 100% recognition.

SPEAKER_01 20:47

Yeah, yeah, providing it's on a DSP. Yep, so yeah. And and what we do do, and we have seen this as well, where we've seen leaks of actually quite big artists where we've been in an area and we're getting a recording that's through and we just can't match it. So we store those fingerprints, acres rolls sometimes take a little while, and there's a cop an option to you know rerun it three or six months later. Um, uh or yeah, it's because it hasn't been released. And we saw that with a major artist actually in Australia about a year ago. Um, and when we we looked to the area that it had leaks because it was all the pubs and the bars and the retailers around the area, the the uh office of their record label was basically in the middle of it all. So it took us about 90 days, and then this recording came through. We got the fingerprint and went, ah, somebody has given either promo CDs out and done something, or you know, WhatsApp. Just gone to the pub to play it. Yeah, exactly. And and and done it out there. So I don't think there was anything untoward. I think they were just generally excited and getting you get you know getting it into the hands of the locals.

SPEAKER_02 21:45

Let's let's deal with live because I I've I've stood in PRS offices where people have told me that audio recognition cannot do live music, okay, and it's it's really inaccurate. Yeah, and I will say, even and this was a Time ago, 2018. Yeah. And even then, they had a band playing. Okay. And they were doing covers. Yeah. And I said, I don't think that's true. And I took my phone out of my pocket and I turned Shazam on. Yeah. And it recognised that they were playing Robbie Williams in 30 seconds. There you go.

SPEAKER_01 22:16

Yeah. So even then, 2018. Yeah, it was, yeah, it was there. So yeah, here we are, kind of, yeah, eight years later. Look, I'm a technologist, right? No technology is perfect. You know, you've always got to reboot your phone or your laptop or do something like that. There can always be things that happen. What we've done is we've we've engineered and we've really driven this forward, particularly over the last few years, and we we're applying this around the world. So this is, as I say, live as far afield in Australia. We had a really cool moment last summer where we worked with Imro in Ireland and we did two of the biggest music festivals there. Um so we did all together now an electric picnic because again, they just wanted to automate set lists and and make it all work. Um, one of the examples of of that that that went wrong being being really open is um it was the Kings of Leon set, which I think was the Saturday evening on electric picnic. I've probably got this the wrong way away, but it was it was definitely Kings of Leon, and their saft engineer killed the feed. So we had a perfect day, and then we just didn't get their set. And in that scenario, you go, guys, look, they they like the feed was turned off, like literally from the desk. We're good, but we can't perform miracles in in that scenario. So and actually, what but what it did is it got that data. So, of course, the festival happened Friday, Saturday, or Saturday, Sunday. That data was was with Imro on the Monday morning, you know. They could, you know, they had the data before money had even come in to make distribution. So it sped up the process, it did that. We can also stitch together gaps. So if we've got a gap where we go, hey, we there was music playing, but we just don't know what it was, which I think is particularly relevant in MVT banus because you've got up and coming artists like me who, yeah, I mean, uh I was pre-DSP, you know, we were selling 99p downloads on iTunes, you know, when when we were putting it out, but but actually, you know, so a lot of our original material just A, we never recorded it. Um, and and and B, it was certainly was was never released. So what we will be able to say in a scenario like that is, guys, music was definitely playing, right? But we just we cannot reference this to in excess of 120 million songs in our database, right?

SPEAKER_02 24:14

And the likelihood at that point is in the sector we're talking about, yeah, that that well, we can be pretty if you can't recognise it, yeah. 85% likely, I think it's 85% likely is it's not on the DSP. Exactly. So therefore, it's almost certainly not part of the PRS catalogue that they represent. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 24:31

Yeah. That's just a straight conclusion. And we've had other rights organisations around the world, you know, PRS are going in other markets who go, Ryan, if you can get us at 50% right, that 50% recognition is 50% further than we were the day before, right? You know, I'll go, yeah, you know, we go, look, we we don't want to deliver a project that a product that only works 50% of the time. We feel 85% is pretty good and improving it.

SPEAKER_02 24:52

Let's dwell on that slightly because Gareth, I mean, we some of these practices of how they try and collect information are just so archaic, it's I it's quite frankly unbelievable sitting here with the holding this box.

SPEAKER_00 25:03

No, but the expectation is still paperwork, you know, and that that's that's a given. Uh but venues are being asked to take bits of paper off of the stage, collate it all and send it in, you know.

SPEAKER_02 25:16

An envelope with a stamp on it.

SPEAKER_00 25:17

Yeah, yeah, an envelope of a stamp that then goes to a company that then has to then send it on to a you know, it's it's it's ridiculous. Like the amount of the room for error and the amount of time it takes for that to get to POS to even be able to do something with is like months.

SPEAKER_02 25:33

I mean, just thinking about it, it's giving me a headache. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We don't do everything about playing headaches.

SPEAKER_01 25:38

I was giving you an example. We um uh what one of our really good friends, uh actually one of our board members' best friends, runs a huge music festival in South Africa called Delicious Festival. It's about 20,000 people um a day on site of the big racetrack, it's huge, you know. He was um uh you know, he had really big artist playing, and I and I went out to it two years ago, and um, because it's his thing, he had kind of his own little fans and friends and family on the on the main stage, and we're sat there having a drink because you know it's over weekend, so you're like, Oh, I can relax a little bit and enjoy it. And I looked down and there was a girl sat there with with the clipboard, and and of course I said to Lloyd, I was like, Is that what I think it is? And he went, Yeah, and it was that rights organisation had sent somebody there side stage with a clipboard to either go and try and pinch a set list that weren't being thrown out to the fans, um, or to write down, and you know, no discredit to her because she was, I would say she was in her early 20s, she was having the time of her life, right? She was deciding baby friends and all these in burner boy and all these amazing artists, but she had also had a couple of drinks, and I think her boyfriend was with her, and you just sit there and you go, There's a lot of money at stake here, right? There's a hell of a lot of money, and and you know, okay, that might be their method, but she could stuff that into a uh a handbag. Joe Burg is you know, nice place, but a handbag could be stolen. It could have rained that night, it could have all just been rubbed off, you know. Just the the margin of error is unbelievable. Where with this, we know second by second.

SPEAKER_00 27:06

Well, we I've done that, by the way. Yeah, got a little bit of a lot of different things. Many, many festivals.

SPEAKER_02 27:09

So whilst working at PRS, in the data we gathers, we our number suggests that they're correctly distributing somewhere between 20 and 34 percent of the money they bring in. That's telling you the data they've got yeah is 20, 34 percent. And and weirdly, some of the stats staring down the camera that PRS for Music put out, they think tell tell their members they're doing amazing things. So one that came up recently, Gareth, was oh, we've collected 230,000 set lists. This yeah there were 177,000 shows in Grassroots Music venues in 2025, and the average was 3.2 bands. So if you're any good at maths, there should have been close to 600,000 set lists. Yeah, they've only got 230,000 set lists for the whole of Live music, not for just our sector. Oh, and they're putting out a statement saying, Look at us, we've got nearly a third of all the set lists we should have.

SPEAKER_00 28:04

Well, the stat in our MVT report this year was 1.058 million individual performances, which again well just because it's a bigger number, it's only reason I'm saying it, but you know, next to 231,000, that's not something to be shown about.

SPEAKER_02 28:20

Weirdly, it's exactly in line with the percentage that we keep telling people we're concerned that you only know 20 to 34 percent of the data and can't distribute the rest.

SPEAKER_00 28:29

And that's just grassroots music venues as well. So if you take out all the massive festivals, the arenas, the you know, the touring venues.

SPEAKER_02 28:35

Oh god, I mean Gla Glastonbury must be an absolute nightmare of lack of information, doesn't it? Well, yeah you would not.

SPEAKER_00 28:41

They might do something like Ryan just described for Glastonbury. They've you know because everybody wants to go to teams of people going to.

SPEAKER_02 28:47

Remarkably, we need a hundred people to write down set lists.

SPEAKER_00 28:49

Yeah, it's they send teams of people to festivals.

SPEAKER_01 28:53

In a way, but yeah, as you say, it could be but there is cost and there's expense to that where this is relatively low cost, relatively, and it's and it's the accuracy as well. Yeah, and that's the key, isn't it? There's there's other stories I can tell you, you know. So when when we launched in Australia on the public performance side, one of the things we saw was there was a it's quite a funny story. So this guy had recorded um a piano cover album for Christmas music, it's just him tinkering along in the background, and he'd never received a royalty in his life. Um, you know, it'd been out in excess of a decade. And the first Christmas that we'd been live, I think we think we launched in about the August, September, um, he was the second most played artist in December across Australia. You know, so this guy went from because of course from the surveys, somebody would walk in and hear it and go, Oh, that's Mariah Carey, that's the Pokes, right? It was their song, but it wasn't their recorded version. So all of a sudden it just jumped up. So it can show that even in a manual scenario, you know, technology will always win because was it the remaster? Was it the original, all these kind of different variables? So yeah.

SPEAKER_03 29:54

So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:55

Here's my question. Okay, and I do know the answer, but I'm gonna let you stare down the camera and tell people how is it possible that we don't have one of these boxes in every grassroots venue already? Why haven't you gone to PRS for music with this, Ryan?

SPEAKER_01 30:12

So um, in honesty, we have. Um, so we so we're very proudly a British business. Everything has been designed, developed, and even manufactured here. That box is manufactured in High Wickham, that's where we built it. So we are 100% British. I didn't I never outsource uh technology contracts and we built a team here, and we're very proud to be that. And it's trust me, that's not easy all the time, right? Costs are higher and to do these things. Um, we always hoped that PRS would be our first kind of true client and that we would start here and then we would grow around the world. Um, there was some genuinely disruption around COVID. We were we were due to start some piloting in in around 2020, and that got delayed. Um, because of that, then you know, like any sensible business that needs to grow and has a commercial mindset, we went out to the wider world and said, okay, where does life look normal? Um, Australia was one of those places. And actually, what we saw was APRA as an organization jumped to it. They said, Look, we've been desperate for this forever because this just delivers accuracy accounts what we do. And they were really smart because they looked at sectors where they knew they'd got gaps to start with and said, Right, let's backfill those and then let's move out to everything else. Um and one of those sectors randomly was dance studios. They said, Look, we we're being lobbied very hard by dance studios, let's start with those, and now we're in everything from dance studios to gyms and nurseries into live music venues as well. Um, with PRS, uh over the last three years, we've run multiple pilots with them, very, very successful pilots with them, um, mainly in public performance. We also created um a partnership with an amazing infrastructure company called PMY. So they are one of the big kind of cabling infrastructure companies. They do everything from BST on Hyde Park, they do Glastonbury, they do even sporting events like Wimbledon and the Australian Open. Because one of the challenges was how do you get this in? Because you know, it was funny when we walked in this room, you were both like, where's the rest of it? No, no, no, that's it, that's genuinely it. Um, and the reason we did the deal with PMY was to say, look, guys, you just need to say yes, it's in the infrastructure, it's already built in. Uh, and the honest answer is we've just had no progress. We have tried and we have fought for artists, we have been backed by some of the biggest artists on the planet, as well as investors, because again, they've seen this problem firsthand and said, We want to help you, we want to drive this along as part of it. And we know that even they have gone and said, Hey, we're seeing this happen around the world. Like, what's going on here? And sadly, the doors have just been closed.

SPEAKER_02 32:32

Okay, so in my Substacks, yep, which repeat again, my personal Substacks, by all means I would go up with the. Okay, but I wrote about the partnership you have with PRS for Music, and you sent me a message saying I need to let you know there is no partnership. Yeah, correct. When did that partnership end?

SPEAKER_01 32:52

So it ended in uh February 25. So that was a a relatively large pilot.

SPEAKER_02 32:58

Um so I'm gonna I'm I'm very conscious of time. Yeah, of course, and I want to get to the big thing we want to announce. I want to be crystal clear, yeah. PRS know that this unit works, correct? Yeah, and had a partnership with you, yeah, which they could be using to get accurate information from the grassroots sector. Yep. From every sector. For any sector they want to use it for. And by February 2025, yeah, basically we're saying to you, we don't want to deploy this.

SPEAKER_01 33:25

Yeah, correct. Yeah. We got to the point where we were putting commercial propositions to them and saying, great, three successful pilots, this has all worked, let's scale up together. You know, you can help define it. You know, and and the thing that we've always been conscious with with rights organizations is they have their distribution policies, they have their methodologies, you know, we report the truth. This is guys, this is this was in this bar, it was in this retail, it was in this grassroots music venue. This is what happened. Here is the output file, right? So, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:50

So just to repeat for everybody at home, they won't deploy this box that would give them 85% accuracy on live music, identify everything they don't own, give them the opportunity to add for everything they do represent. Yeah, get people paid accurately, and the data could be with them. Yeah, with it within 24 hours.

SPEAKER_01 34:08

Within 24 hours. Most organizations take an end of the case. They didn't want to deploy this. Yeah, that's right. Okay. So Yeah, it's and and I think for us it's it's a it's a frustration, it's a shame because we you know we've always seen ourselves as let's just create solutions and do it. Um, I've also as as I've created this business, worked with people that worked with a PRS, you know, so you know, bought board advisors around me, been out, really assessed the market, understood their numbers to make sure, you know, you know, and to be real clear, we weren't going in and saying, hey, you need to pay us 10 million pounds a year. You know, the commercial proposition was not like that um at all. It was guys, we've worked off this is a couple of percent of your 20 or 25 percent, whatever you're taking, just to automate. We're not asking you to, you know, put more onto the venues or anything like that.

SPEAKER_02 34:56

So you and me have been talking for a little while. We have we brought Gareth in. Yeah. Uh the amounts may already, some people may have seen it. Yeah. But PRS won't deploy this. So all do and Music Venue Trust are going to deploy it. Absolutely. Yeah. Um, and we're gonna start by putting it in Gareth thing We've got a hundred, over a hundred venues now, uh 108. And we need, I think to get we're very, very insistent. We want an accurate sample of the different type of licenses, different capacities, yeah, different kind of genres. So we need it in jazz clubs and blues clubs and folk clubs, we need it in the smallest venue, the biggest venue within our membership. So I think the statistic thing that came back was we need 108 of these. Yeah. And Ryan, I should tell people you've offered to deploy them for us.

SPEAKER_01 35:44

Yeah, yeah, we will we are we're funding this ourselves because we we care about getting the data to then flow that money through. So let's let's get the data, let's and let's provide it with the world. Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_02 35:55

And once we have that data, basically we're gonna be able to authoritively tell songwriters your song was used here completely. Yeah, so at this time.

SPEAKER_01 36:05

Yeah, so yeah, so it's your song was used here at this time, or music was played here at this time, and we don't know what it is, therefore it's either not registered or it's not represented.

SPEAKER_02 36:13

Okay. Yeah. I my personal view is Gareth, I think that probably opens up a whole new line of debate between us and PRS for music about tariff LP. First thing we're gonna learn is how many songs it can't recognise. Yep. Of course. Next thing will be except we don't have the data, but we we don't you don't have the data of whether they're PRS members or not.

SPEAKER_01 36:35

No, so no, so we'll be able we'll essentially be able to tell you what the that that writing code was, the ISR, ISWC, sorry, and then of course if it's pre-recorded or the sample.

SPEAKER_02 36:45

So at that point, once we have all that data from 108 sampled venues that would be extrapolated to the good picture of the whole sector, it's then up to PRS for music to come in and say this percentage of that catalogue is actually represented by us.

SPEAKER_01 36:59

Yeah, yeah, you can present that to them and say, guys, this is everything. Okay, it's the raw data.

SPEAKER_02 37:03

So if you are a PRS member and you are watching this, and if you are at PRS for music, and you are, but we will be watching this, we all know that you watch our stuff and you follow me like some weird stalker on the internet as though I'm gonna do something awful to you, don't laugh. That's what happens, right? Right, so uh we I think we're starting, we'll probably be starting soon. Yeah, yeah, probably take three to six months, maybe, for us to get a set of data that's big enough for us to say, here is the grassroots sector, and then we can solve this with data, and everybody, everybody in this sector can pay the correct amount of money and be confident it's going to the correct solar base.

SPEAKER_01 37:41

And I was just going to add it's what has been fascinating with Gareth O'Lussi Roots is the overwhelming response of the venues of how quickly can I get one? You know, it's not it's not a what is it, what do I need to do? I don't want that. It's a how quickly can I get one?

SPEAKER_02 37:55

I'm you know, that's that's the biggest the biggest myth of this is that venues don't want to accurately pay songwriters. Yeah. A lot of venues are run by people who are in bands or have been in bands and they want to they want to get.

SPEAKER_01 38:06

I've never met a venue owner that plays music that goes. You know, that's that's that's the reason they did it.

SPEAKER_00 38:12

To be clear as well, we haven't reached out to all of our members yet. We've okay.

SPEAKER_02 38:16

We've got to try to find the exact sample we need to really represent them very well. So we have rural locations, city centre locations. Yeah, 108 gives you a really representative sample. We know this from doing certain. I'm gonna go do those installs myself. So that's our message for everybody watching this. One of these can get accurate songwriter rolls paid in this country. You have to ask yourself why is the songwriting collection agency not willing to do that? Why is the the organization that represents venues willing to do it with our partners at Aurdu or Aurdu, depending on what we go? Spend another day. So look, thanks, Ryan, for bringing us in, and we look forward to working with you, Gareth. Probably didn't give you enough time to tell how terrible everything was, but it was good to have you here. Um, thanks for watching The Last Safe Space. Uh, there's lots of ways you could support our work in things like this because we're gonna have to manage this data. If you're not already, do become a member of the supporters circle. Um, please pay attention to all our socials, join our mailing list. Um, we need activists for projects like this that makes things better for everybody in the sector venues, artists, promoters, we're all in it together. This is something that we really believe can really help our sector get the right money to the right pockets. So thanks for watching. Uh, I think Tony's catchphrase is uh keep the lights on, keep supporting live music.