Hi Deborah,
Thank you for taking the time to leave us feedback.
We appreciate that our tariffs can be confusing; as you know, we will annually send a review form to customers on certain tariffs in order to obtain declarations of usage. Alongside the actual declarations form, there is a section of the documents that explains which income needs to be declared and which income would be considered exempt. You will find this under the section "How to Calculate Income". If any further clarification is required please do not hesitate to reach out to our Community Buildings Team.
On this tariff, the fixed fee you have referred to is the minimum royalty fee, which is subject to increases based on inflation. PPL adjusts their tariffs based solely on the annual increase in the Retail Price Index (RPI), and PRS adjusts their tariff based on the average increase of both the RPI and Average Weekly Earnings (AWE).
Whilst we sincerely appreciate that some organisations are volunteer-based and may have a lower annual income than others that fall within the same bracket, the minimum tariff costs have been formally agreed between PRS, PPL, and ACRE (Action With Communities in Rural England), who are the representative body for community buildings in England.
With regard to your concerns around the distribution of the royalties we collect from you, our members range from grassroots and independent artists and composers through to the biggest names in the business; PRS alone represent the rights for over 30 million works. Whilst I understand your objections to this, and it remains true that we distribute royalties based on the music most often played within businesses, we also distribute royalties to smaller artists, for whom this income can make an enormous amount of difference.
If you have any further questions please do let me know and I would be more than happy to help.
