British authors rights society MCPS-PRS Alliance has recorded its most successful year ever in 2005. Revenues collected by the Alliance reached £524.7 million ($919.6 million) in 2005, up close to 10% over 2004 figures.
Taking into account administrative costs and exceptional expenses, which account for 11.5%, the society said it redistributed £472 million ($822.5 million) to its 40,000 members, up 9% from 2004.
The un-audited figures were unveiled today (March 8) during its annual company conference ahead of a March 29 board meeting. The event gathered more than 700 MCPS-PRS Alliance employees and members at the Dominion Theatre in London.
Presenting the figures, the Alliance managing director Steve Porter said revenues have been up in all the different sectors, including mechanicals (up 13%), public performance (up 4%), broadcasting (up 4%) and international (up 9%).
The steep rise in mechanical revenues, in a music market where over-the-counter sales were flat, is due, Porter says to a massive volume of CD “covermounts” offered for free by British newspapers. A total of 250 million CDs were bundled with newspapers in 2005.
“2005 was a great year for the Alliance,” said Porter, who added that for 2006 he expected income growth to be “as good as” in 2005.
During the conference, MCPS-PRS Alliance CEO Adam Singer insisted on the need for all in the industry to embrace change. He said record companies were in a “state of denial” regarding the depth of the changes in the digital world and that labels were only now starting to adjust their business model.
He suggested that collecting societies in general, and the Alliance in particular, need also to adapt to these changes. “This new technology allows competition. We will see the rise of private collecting societies, and invading foreign societies. How do we cope with that, as the MCPS/PRS is a 100 year old monopoly enshrined within a national boundary,” he commented in his keynote address. In the online world, he noted, there are “no national boundaries.”
Singer added, “the idea that convergence is happening to the rest of the world and will not affect us has got to be wrong.”
Singer raised the issue that in the changing environment, the Alliance – which comprises two different boards — should also look at transforming itself.
The PRS administers the performing right in the musical works of its 40,000-plus composer, songwriter and music publisher members. Its sister company MCPS administers the mechanical right in the musical works of its 16,000 members.
