Grassroots Royalties Study Finds Just 21% of Live Music Registered

Grassroots royalties face a major test as a new pilot study finds only 21% of live music matched registered repertoire, raising fresh questions about fair songwriter payments.

The magic of a small venue is its glorious unpredictability: one minute, a band is tearing through a new song nobody’s heard; the next, a familiar chorus has the whole room shouting along. But that wonderfully messy reality may be exposing serious gaps in how live music royalties are tracked and paid.

A New Look at Grassroots Royalties

The Music Venue Trust has released findings from a pilot study examining whether current royalty distribution methods accurately reflect the music performed in grassroots venues. The headline figure is striking: only 21% of the recorded live performance audio matched songs registered with PRS for Music.

The research was carried out with Audoo, a company that has developed technology designed to monitor music usage and help identify how royalties should be collected and distributed when songs are played.

Conducted between August and September 2026, the pilot had two connected goals. First, it aimed to test how closely existing music licensing models reflect the repertoire heard in grassroots venues. Second, it explored whether technology could provide a clearer, more accurate way to distribute money to songwriters.

Across 623 hours of live performance audio, the system identified 134 hours as matching songs registered with PRS for Music. That represents 21% of the total audio captured.

For the Music Venue Trust, the figure broadly aligns with its previous estimates. The organization has long challenged the assumption that virtually all music performed in grassroots venues belongs to registered repertoire. In its view, the findings strengthen the argument that royalty distribution needs to be based on better evidence rather than broad assumptions.

What the Pilot Recorded Inside Live Venues

The numbers become even more revealing when you look beyond the headline percentage. During the pilot, the technology recognized 2,238 live performances, including 23 tribute-band sets containing more than 380 songs.

It also picked up artists performing their own material. Among those identified were 13 songs from the catalogs of James Walsh of Starsailor and Ben Ottewell of Gomez. That detail matters because live venues aren’t simply replaying the same small collection of well-known recordings. They’re full of original material, fresh arrangements, unreleased songs and performances that can be difficult for recognition systems to identify.

September alone produced 1,190 different songs during live performances. A remarkable 87% of those songs were heard only once. In other words, the typical grassroots venue playlist doesn’t behave like a radio rotation, where a limited group of tracks returns again and again.

Recorded music heard in the venues was similarly varied. The study identified 10,943 tracks by 6,248 artists. That’s a sprawling musical landscape, more like a packed record store than a tightly programmed broadcast schedule.

The findings also showed that no individual artist was heard in more than 16 of the 64 venues that supplied data during September. That lack of repetition presents a challenge for systems that rely on radio or major concert activity as a proxy for wider music consumption.

Why Radio and Arena Data May Not Tell the Full Story

Here’s the rub: grassroots venues operate in a different musical universe from radio stations and large-scale concert tours.

Radio tends to favor identifiable recordings with established metadata. Major concerts often involve well-documented setlists and performers whose catalogs are already extensively registered. Small venues, meanwhile, are where emerging artists try out new songs, where tribute acts reinterpret familiar material and where bands may change their sets from night to night.

That difference means data drawn from radio and major concerts may not accurately represent what happens in intimate venues. If royalty payments are calculated using those environments as stand-ins for the whole live music ecosystem, songwriters whose work is performed in smaller rooms could be overlooked.

Music Venue Trust CEO Mark Davyd said the study challenges the long-held belief that all music performed in grassroots venues is registered repertoire.

“For years, we’ve challenged the assumption that all music performed in grassroots venues is registered repertoire. These initial findings raise important questions about how accurately the current licensing system reflects what’s actually being played. This study is an opportunity to move beyond estimates and assumptions and develop an evidence-based approach that works fairly for venues and songwriters alike.”

— Mark Davyd

Steve Robbins, Audoo’s chief technology officer, also emphasized the basic principle behind the project: songwriters should be paid when their work is performed, but accurate payment depends on knowing what was played.

“Songwriters should be paid when their music is performed, but that depends on knowing what has actually been played. Our technology can provide detailed usage data without requiring venues to submit setlists. This larger study will give us a more comprehensive picture that we hope will benefit venues, songwriters and collecting societies alike.”

— Steve Robbins

The 21% Figure Needs Careful Reading

The 21% result has already attracted attention, but it doesn’t mean the remaining 79% is automatically unregistered music.

The Music Venue Trust clarified that unmatched audio could include speech between songs, background noise and performances the technology simply failed to identify. Live music is a particularly demanding environment for audio recognition: instruments overlap, arrangements change, performers improvise, and new or unreleased material may not exist in a reference database.

That distinction is important. The pilot does not prove that 79% of the music played in these venues falls outside registered repertoire. Instead, it demonstrates how much uncertainty exists in the current process—and how difficult it can be to establish what was performed without reliable usage data.

A second, larger study is scheduled to run between October and December 2026. It will involve 108 grassroots venues across the UK and is intended to examine the issue in greater depth.

The project is designed to measure music usage without creating extra administrative work for venues. That means no additional paperwork and no requirement for venues to submit setlists manually. The goal is a system that can capture what happens onstage while allowing venues to focus on the thing they do best: putting on shows.

PRS Raises Questions About Recognition Technology

PRS for Music has acknowledged the importance of accurate royalty distribution while raising concerns about the reliability of music recognition technology in grassroots live settings.

The organization said it has used recognition technology for many years to identify music played on radio, in clubs and at festivals across the UK. However, it argued that live grassroots performances present different technical challenges, particularly when musicians perform new or unreleased material.

There is also a crucial difference between recognizing a sound recording and identifying the underlying song or composition. A live version may sound significantly different from a studio recording, even when it is based on the same composition.

PRS said the pilot’s 21% identification rate should not be interpreted as proof that the other music is unregistered or outside its repertoire. Instead, the unmatched material may reflect the limitations of identifying live performances accurately.

The organization also said the initial findings appear to differ from setlist and repertoire information supplied by members and venues. It said it looks forward to reviewing the full data to understand why the two sets of information do not align.

At the same time, PRS stated that it shares the ambition of identifying music usage accurately and ensuring songwriters and composers are fairly rewarded.

A Wider Dispute Over Licensing Fees

The pilot study arrives during a broader campaign by the Music Venue Trust concerning how PRS licensing fees are calculated, applied and enforced across the grassroots venue sector.

Earlier in 2026, the organization launched an initiative called “Set The Record Straight: Fair Licensing Fees.” The campaign followed complaints about what it described as systemic problems, including incorrect venue-capacity calculations and unclear responsibility between promoters and venues.

As part of that work, more than £666,000 in discrepancies connected to PRS-related licensing charges were identified across venues in England, Scotland and Wales. In one case, the discrepancy amounted to £90,000, a sum the Music Venue Trust said could permanently close a grassroots venue.

The organization also estimated that £14,000 in artist money went unclaimed between March 2022 and June 2025. According to Davyd, much of that money may belong to artists who are already registered with PRS but have not received what they are owed.

“Between March 2022 and June 2025, we estimate £14,000 of unclaimed money from artists. Loads of them would be PRS-registered and would be easy for them to find, but it’s just sitting in PRS’ bank.”

— Mark Davyd

Davyd argued that unclaimed funds should ultimately reach the artists or writers entitled to them. He also questioned what should happen to money connected to creators who are not registered.

“It should be in the artist or the writer’s hands, and PRS should have the infrastructure to get it to them. Some of the money in that black hole doesn’t belong to them because they’re not PRS-registered, so who does it belong to? It needs investigating. If it’s that much money just for my venue then just imagine how much is unclaimed in total.”

— Mark Davyd

Music Makers Call for Better Transparency

The debate has drawn support from the Council of Music Makers, which called for further improvements in collective rights management.

The council said better accuracy, distribution and transparency are needed, while warning that changes must not create unintended consequences that make it harder for creators to earn a living in an already difficult industry.

Its recommendations include making licenses fair and transparent for both music-makers and music users, including grassroots venues. It also called for new technology to address inaccuracies and inefficiencies in songwriter payments.

The larger Music Venue Trust and Audoo study will now be watched closely. Its results could help clarify whether the 21% figure reflects a genuine gap in registered repertoire, a limitation of audio-recognition technology, or a combination of both.

Either way, the central question remains refreshingly simple: when music is played in a small venue, can the system reliably identify it—and make sure the right people are paid?

Conclusion

Grassroots venues are where musical careers often begin, but their fast-changing, highly varied performances don’t fit neatly into systems built around radio playlists and polished recordings. The next phase of research could provide a clearer map of what’s really being played—and what fair royalty distribution should look like in the wonderfully chaotic world of live music.

FAQ

• What did the grassroots royalties pilot study find?
  It found that 134 hours, or 21% of 623 hours of captured live performance audio, matched songs registered with PRS for Music.
• Does the remaining 79% represent unregistered music?
  Not necessarily. Unmatched audio may include talking between songs, new or unreleased material, background sound, or performances the technology could not identify accurately.
• Who conducted the study?
  The pilot was carried out by the Music Venue Trust in collaboration with Audoo, a company that develops music-monitoring technology.
• Why are grassroots venues difficult to monitor?
  Performances may feature new songs, altered arrangements, improvisation, tribute sets and music that differs significantly from its recorded version.
• What happens next?
  A larger study will run from October through December 2026 and will involve 108 grassroots venues across the UK.

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