PRS Licences and Grassroots Venues: The 21% PilotMusic Venue Trust measured 623 hours of live music in grassroots rooms and matched a fifth of it to known songs. What the pilot shows, what PRS says, how a ticketed gig's licence is worked out, and what it means for writers, venues and promoters.
The short version
Music Venue Trust and the music-recognition company Audoo measured 623 hours of live music in grassroots venues during August and September 2026, and matched 134 hours, or 21 per cent, to known songs. MVT says that fits its long-held estimate that registered repertoire makes up between 20 and 34 per cent of what these rooms play, far less than it says the licensing system assumes. PRS for Music says the technology is unproven for live grassroots sets and that the figure does not mean the rest is unregistered. A bigger study across more than 100 venues runs to December, with results due in January 2027.
Below: what the pilot measured, how a ticketed gig's PRS licence is worked out, what 4 per cent comes to in rooms the size of the ones in our directory, how to check a venue's licence, a Greater Manchester story from the same week, and what to do with all of it.
Every ticketed gig in a small room carries a charge most of the crowd never sees. A slice of the door goes to PRS for Music, and PRS is meant to pass it on to the songwriters whose songs were played that night. The question this week is a simple one: whose songs were they?
I have played enough of these rooms to know the honest answer is often "ours". Original bands play their own material, and not all of it is registered with anyone. This week the Music Venue Trust put a first number on that, and PRS pushed back. Here is what was actually measured, what it does and does not prove, and what it means for your next gig. For the wider state of these rooms, our state of the circuit report has the background.
October 2026 · sources cited in the body
The pilot and the licence, by the numbers
Pilot figures are Music Venue Trust's; the tariff is as reported by Music Week; the Greater Manchester figures are the GMCA's. Directory counts are a dated snapshot taken on 17 October 2026 and will have moved since.
- 21%Share of 623 hours of measured live audio matched to known songs, MVT and Audoo pilot, August to September 2026
- 4%PRS Tariff LP rate on gross box office for ticketed live music, as set in June 2018, or 4.2 per cent if fees are not declared
- 40pWhat 4 per cent comes to on a single £10 ticket, before VAT and fees
- 100+ venuesGrassroots rooms in the full study, October to December 2026, with results due January 2027
- 523 gigsUpcoming listings in our directory mentioning the word tribute on 17 October 2026, out of 8,263 gigs listed
- £2mPledged for Greater Manchester's music scene on 9 October, on top of £4m from its Culture Fund
Pilot figures are Music Venue Trust's; the tariff is as reported by Music Week; the Greater Manchester figures are the GMCA's. Directory counts are a dated snapshot taken on 17 October 2026 and will have moved since.
1. What the pilot measured: 623 hours, 134 matched
A meter on the mixing desk, not a setlist
Audoo's Audio Meter takes a feed from a venue's mixing desk and identifies known songs as they are played, live or as recorded music between sets, with no paperwork or setlist needed from anyone. Music Venue Trust's announcement says the pilot ran for 2 months, August and September 2026, and that across 623 hours of live performance audio the meters identified 134 hours as matching known songs or works.
That is the 21 per cent in the headlines. MVT's chief executive, Mark Davyd, describes the next phase as a chance to "move beyond estimates and assumptions", which is a fair summary of where both sides are standing.
What 21 per cent does not tell you
It does not mean 79 per cent of grassroots music is unregistered, and MVT says so itself: the unmatched audio includes speech between songs and anything else the meters could not identify. PRS for Music made the point more sharply in a statement carried by NME, saying the technology "has not yet been proven to work reliably for live performances in grassroots venues", that recognising a recording is different from identifying the underlying song, and that the findings appear to differ from the setlist and repertoire information it receives from members and venues.
Both things can be true at once. A meter will miss things, and plenty of what gets played in a small room on a Tuesday was never going to be on any database. The full study is how you tell those two apart, which is why the January results matter more than this week's number.
The rest of the pilot, in numbers
The headline figure got the coverage, but the detail further down MVT's release is more useful if you programme or play these rooms. MVT says the repertoire differs markedly from the radio and major-concert data commonly used as proxies for royalty distribution.
| Measure | Pilot figure | What it suggests |
|---|---|---|
| Live performance audio measured | 623 hours | A sample, not a census: the full study is the bigger test |
| Audio matched to known songs or works | 134 hours (21 per cent) | MVT's own long-standing estimate is 20 to 34 per cent |
| Live performances recognised | 2,238, including 23 tribute-band sets of 380+ songs | Covers of well-known songs were picked up |
| Different songs heard live in September | 1,190, 87 per cent of them heard once | A very long tail of repertoire |
| Recorded music identified | 10,943 tracks by 6,248 artists | Background music is just as varied as the bands |
| Venues sending September data | 64 venues; no artist heard in more than 16 | A very different shape from a national chart or an arena setlist |
What the Music Venue Trust and Audoo pilot recorded, August to September 2026
The tribute-band line is the one I would underline. The meters did find covers, including all 13 tracks of My Chemical Romance's The Black Parade played in album order. What they could not match may include new and unreleased songs and songs by writers with no publisher, as well as speech and anything the meters simply missed. Working out how much of each is the job of the full study, and it is the gap MVT is arguing about.
2. How a ticketed gig's PRS licence is worked out: 4 per cent of the door
Tariff LP, agreed in 2018
Ticketed live popular music is licensed under PRS's Tariff LP. According to Music Week's report on the last review, the rate rose from 3 per cent to 4 per cent of gross box office receipts from 11 June 2018, and that review is the most recent change to the rate we could find. A higher 4.2 per cent applies where the licensee chooses not to account for booking, admin and service fees, and the minimum fee is waived where music reporting requirements are met. Music Week lists the Music Venue Trust among the live-sector bodies that agreed those terms, which the Copyright Tribunal then approved.
Outside the ticketed show, a pub or bar playing music as part of its business, live or recorded, is likely to need TheMusicLicence from PPL PRS, the combined licence for songwriters and recordings.
Where the money is supposed to go
In principle the money follows the songs. In practice, MVT argues, distribution has leaned on proxies such as radio airplay, national broadcast, manual surveys and streaming patterns, which it says favour mainstream repertoire. Music Week and NME both report that MVT has also raised what it calls systemic issues in how PRS-related charges are assessed, including capacity calculations and unclear liability between promoters and venues.
PRS's position, as Music Week reported in June, is that it licenses venues on the data they provide, uses estimates only when that data is missing, and is improving how it collects setlists. That is the disagreement in two sentences, and it is why a meter on the desk interests both sides.
What 4 per cent comes to in rooms like the ones we list
Percentages are easy to wave away, so here is the arithmetic on real room sizes. On 17 October 2026 our grassroots venue directory held a standing capacity for 1,374 venues, which we group into small, medium and large rooms. The table takes the median room in each group, assumes a £10 ticket, and applies the Tariff LP rates.
Small (under 150)
| Venues with a capacity on file | 524 |
| Median capacity | 80 |
| Door, sold out | £800 |
| Tariff LP at 4% | £32.00 |
| At 4.2% | £33.60 |
| Half full, at 4% | £16.00 |
Medium (150 to 499)
| Venues with a capacity on file | 562 |
| Median capacity | 238 |
| Door, sold out | £2,380 |
| Tariff LP at 4% | £95.20 |
| At 4.2% | £99.96 |
| Half full, at 4% | £47.60 |
Large (500 and up)
| Venues with a capacity on file | 288 |
| Median capacity | 950 |
| Door, sold out | £9,500 |
| Tariff LP at 4% | £380.00 |
| At 4.2% | £399.00 |
| Half full, at 4% | £190.00 |
Tariff LP on one ticketed night at £10 a ticket, by room size in the GigXchange directory (17 October 2026)
| Room size (our tier) | Venues with a capacity on file | Median capacity | Door, sold out | Tariff LP at 4% | At 4.2% | Half full, at 4% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small (under 150) | 524 | 80 | £800 | £32.00 | £33.60 | £16.00 |
| Medium (150 to 499) | 562 | 238 | £2,380 | £95.20 | £99.96 | £47.60 |
| Large (500 and up) | 288 | 950 | £9,500 | £380.00 | £399.00 | £190.00 |
Tariff LP on one ticketed night at £10 a ticket, by room size in the GigXchange directory (17 October 2026)
Capacities are standing figures from our directory, the medium median rounded to a whole person. Our large tier runs past what most people would call a grassroots room, so read that row as an upper bound. The sums are illustrative: they ignore VAT, booking fees and any minimum fee.
None of those figures will close a venue on its own, and the argument is not really about the size of the charge. It is about whether the 40p on each ticket reaches the person who wrote the song you heard.
3. Who the gap affects: writers, covers acts and 1,190 different songs
Songwriters playing their own material
If you write your own songs and you are a PRS member, the live side of your royalties depends on PRS knowing what you played. That means reporting your setlists through your PRS online account (start from PRS's music and royalties pages), and the habit that works is doing it after each gig rather than in a panic months later. The pilot even picked up songwriters playing their own material, including 13 songs from the catalogues of James Walsh of Starsailor and Ben Ottewell of Gomez.
If you are not a member, or your songs are not registered, PRS has nothing of yours to pay out, whatever any meter hears. That is not a criticism of anyone; it is how a collecting society works, and it is the part of this story you can act on this week. Our setlist builder keeps a clean record of each set, which makes the reporting quicker.
Covers and tribute nights: 523 gigs in our listings
At the other end of the bill is the covers and tribute circuit, where nearly every song is somebody else's registered work. Those are the nights where the licence and the repertoire line up most neatly, and the pilot recognised 23 tribute-band sets across its 2 months.
Our own listings give a sense of how big that slice is. On 17 October 2026, 523 of the 8,263 gigs listed ahead in our gig directory had the word tribute in the act name or tagline, roughly 1 in 16. Treat it as a rough guide rather than an exact count. Plenty of tribute acts never use the word, the odd listing may use it for something else (although all 12 we checked by hand were tribute acts), and our listings lean towards ticketed shows.
A long tail no radio chart would recognise
The detail from the pilot I keep coming back to is the September one: 87 per cent of the songs recognised live were heard only once, and no single artist turned up in more than 16 of the 64 venues that sent data. If you have spent any time in these rooms that will not surprise you. It is also exactly why using radio airplay or arena setlists as a stand-in for what grassroots rooms play is the part MVT is pushing on hardest.
4. PRS licence check: what venues and acts can ask
How to check a venue's music licence
So how do you know a room is licensed? The straightforward route is to ask the venue or promoter whether the night is covered, either under Tariff LP for a ticketed show or under TheMusicLicence for the premises. If you run the room and want to know which licences apply to you, the GigXchange PRS licence check walks through it in up to ten plain-English questions, covering both the permission side and the copyright side, with an indicative cost bracket.
Our UK live music licence guide has the longer version, including the Live Music Act exemptions, and our guide to using AI for venue compliance covers drafting the PRS and PPL paperwork without losing an afternoon to it.
Ask PRS for the figures behind a charge
Whichever side of the argument you lean towards, the practical move for a venue is the same: make sure PRS is working from your real capacity, attendance and box office, and ask what was used if a charge looks wrong. Here is a note you can adapt.
Hello,
We are licensed under Tariff LP for live music at [venue name], [town]. Please could you confirm the figures used to calculate the charge for [event name] on [date]:
- the capacity you have on record for the room
- the attendance and gross box office figures used
- whether any of those figures were estimated, and if so, why
Our own figures for the night are: capacity [number], tickets sold [number], gross box office [amount], booking fees [declared / not declared].
We are happy to send the setlists for the night if that helps match the music to the right writers.
Thanks,
[name]
[role], [venue name]It asks for numbers rather than making accusations, and it offers setlists: better data on what was played is the one thing MVT and PRS both say they want more of.
5. Also this week: Greater Manchester maps 50-plus venues and pledges £2m
The Beat Network: grassroots rooms by bus and tram
The Greater Manchester Music Commission, Music Venue Trust and Transport for Greater Manchester have launched the Beat Network, a map showing how to reach more than 50 venues by Bee Network buses, night buses and trams. About Manchester reports that Greater Manchester has 52 venues in the Music Venue Alliance and picks out routes such as the 83 past Band on the Wall and the 216 for Night and Day and Gullivers. Salford Now names Islington Mill, The Eagle Inn and The White Hotel on the Salford side, with night buses at £2 a single journey on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights.
It is a small thing that fixes a real problem. Getting home is half the decision to go out on a Wednesday, and a map that answers it is worth more than another poster.
£2m for rehearsal space, on top of the Culture Fund
A few days earlier, on 9 October, the Greater Manchester Combined Authority said Mayor Bev Craig had pledged £2m for the city region's music scene, aimed at rehearsal and production space, practical support and jobs for musicians, on top of the £4m from its Culture Fund announced earlier in the month. GMCA puts the region at over 1,100 premises that play live music and says the Greater Manchester Music Plan goes for formal approval in December.
We covered the Culture Fund, and what it means for one grassroots room, in our earlier Greater Manchester post. The rooms themselves are in our Manchester venue directory.
6. What it means for you
The same story lands differently depending on which side of the door you are on, so here it is by role.
7. What to do next
Five things, in the order I would do them.
- Read the source, not the headline. MVT's announcement and NME's report, which carries PRS's response, take five minutes between them. Pollstar's write-up covers the same findings for a trade audience.
- Writers: report every set. Log each gig's setlist with PRS through your online account (PRS's music and royalties pages are the starting point), the same week you play it.
- Venues: check your licences and your figures. Read the live music licence guide and keep capacity, attendance and box office for every ticketed night. The venue hub has the rest of the toolkit.
- Promoters: name the licensee in the contract. The booking contract generator gives you somewhere to write it down, alongside the fee and the payment date. Routing a run? Start from the promoter hub.
- Back the rooms themselves. Our guide to supporting grassroots venues and the ticket levy explainer cover the bigger money questions, and the gig directory is where to find tonight's show.
I will come back to this when MVT and Audoo publish the full study in January. If the gap holds up across more than 100 venues, it is the strongest evidence yet that grassroots music is paid for in one place and rewarded in another. If it shrinks, PRS will have made its point. Either way it will have been measured rather than guessed, which is better for everyone who writes a song and plays it to forty people on a Tuesday.
02 — Questions7 answersAsked and answeredFrequently Asked Questions
Annual refresh commitment
This guide was published on 17 October 2026 and is refreshed every October. The full study results in January 2027, any Tariff LP review and our directory counts all move between updates, so annual verification matters. We re-verify every reference, recommendation, and data point once a year. Next scheduled refresh: October 2027. If any claim is outdated before then, email support@gigxchange.app and we aim to update it within one working day.
