The honesty bookshop, by Russell Trow. Used under licence.

Time to come clean. Three years ago, I ran a pirate radio station. On the internet. I called it “The Album Station”. I even got jingles made, by the ever-so-good DevaWeb (ever so good at answering briefs, incidentally). It ran on an old box at home, and was available to hundreds of people across the world.

It was an experiment in a new music format that simply used music sales figures to produce a radio station - no music testing, no heads of music. It was initially an idea I submitted in the late ’90s to Emap, who I was working for at the time; local management was excited about it, so I sent it to group management in London, who not only ignored it totally, but made me redundant shortly afterwards. (In 9 months, they’d hired a replacement. That’s totally legal, and I’ll not have you say anything else. And it got me out of Sheffield, I guess.)

Anyway, The Album Station was using music entirely without payment. At no stage had I bothered to speak to PPL or the MCPS/PRS Alliance. Whatsoever. And at no stage did they spot my (not entirely clandestine) radio station, and at no stage did they ask me for any money.

Interesting, therefore, to read a blog post about the MCPS/PRS Alliance from Kevin Coy who writes, in part, that he’s…

…getting more and more miffed by the fact that the alliance are not the sharpest tools in the box when it comes to dealing with online radio piracy. They are very quick, very sharp, and very well organised when it comes to taking the legitimate broadcaster’s money, issuing invoices, and getting on the phone when a payment is late, but if a station is reported to them by a member of the public, by a licence holder (licence holders are obliged to report any illegal activity regarding breaches of copyright), or as we are currently seeing in one situation, widely reported in the press, this well-oiled piece of machinery seems to lose its wheels, and veer rapidly into a brick wall to which it’s blind to get around…

…the alliance is charged with looking after its clients (artists, composers, singers, songwriters etc etc), although it seems that they are only interested in doing this if as a broadcaster, you come forward and make yourself known to them. This smacks of the reality that the alliance are relying on the honesty of the online broadcasting community to come forward and do just that, but as we know all too well, they are being remarkably over-optimistic…

Let’s take this a little wider.

PPL, and MCPS/PRS, have sole responsibility to collect for music use in the UK.

Last year, PPL renegotiated the music licence with commercial radio to prohibit broadcasting overseas via the internet, in a licence that started in April 2006. But, PPL only holds the rights for the UK anyway. They have absolutely no right to collect for overseas use. Most commercial radio stations mistakenly agreed with the RadioCentre that they should stop broadcasting overseas, because the PPL licence said so. Yet actually, nothing had changed: PPL never had any rights overseas in the first place. Most stations descended into panic, and pulled their overseas streams.

(Some stations, being fair, never wanted Johnny Foreigner tuning in. They didn’t have RAJAR diaries, and they cost stations money, so what was the point? Agreed, to a point. But these stations mistakenly used the new PPL contract as an excuse; setting precedents that smaller stations didn’t feel comfortable fighting.)

So, non-UK listeners lose UK stations. There’s another side of the bargain here, of course.

PPL and MCPS/PRS are responsible for ALL music use in the UK; including non-UK broadcasters who make their broadcasts available in the UK (via the internet or other means). So, non-UK stations should be paying their way in the UK. PPL, and MCPS/PRS, need to ensure that they gain proper payment from other music users who are available within the UK. And they’ve singularly failed to do so. In fact, I am unaware of any example where a non-UK broadcaster has been forced to pay either body for their music use.

UK broadcasters have thousands of non-UK “pirates”, not paying their way and without any contact from PPL/MCPS/PRS. So, they can’t monetise their non-UK audience, while the two music collection agencies in the UK are failing to monetise non-UK broadcasters available in the UK.

It gets worse. As Kevin eloquently points out, the two organisations are next to useless at even policing their own shores. My own experience with The Album Station proved that. And my various posts about last.fm are clear that PPL/MCPS/PRS are content with sitting back and not policing this space, allowing pirate broadcasters (as last.fm still are) to make themselves into a multi million pound business. Kevin notes that Hitz Radio UK are also still broadcasting, despite clearly not paying for the “millions” of listeners they get.

If you pay people without any risk of a penalty for not paying, that’s simply a tax on being honest. And at some stage, you question its purpose.

Putting aside the fact that both organisations have virtually no understanding about how the internet works - writing “website” into a contract where “server” is the correct term, for example, isn’t unusual - I don’t understand why I don’t read about internet radio stations getting shut down by PPL and PRS/MCPS for not paying correct music licences.

PPL, and MCPS/PRS, do their jobs on the behalf of their members. I wonder when their members will wake up to the poor role that these organisations do on their behalf - and find people less incompetent to represent them?

(Do you run a station or website in the UK? Have you had an email from PPL or MCPS/PRS enquiring about your music use or threatening court action? Am I being too harsh? Let me know in the comments.)