MCPS Membership Criteria

Some of you may have been reading various posts on the various social medias about MCPS and are probably wondering what this is all about!

Songwriters collect royalties from two strands of copyright, performance (or compositional) and mechanical. Most songwriters in the UK are members of an organisation called PRS (Performing Rights Society) which collects the compositional/performance royalties for writers. MCPS (Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society) is the sister organisation which collects the mechanical royalties.

In a day and age when royalties and songwriter income is being continually squeezed it’s important for us as a community to be able to receive money in the ‘system’ that owed to us. Anyone who releases their music on services such as Spotify will be generating mechanical royalties, but unless you are an MCPS member, or have a publisher these can’t be accessed.

Until now it’s been nearly impossible for independent artists to join MCPS to collect these mechanical royalties, unless they are published or use services such as Sentric Music or Song Trust. Why? Well, the joining criteria has made it difficult for those who self release, or for those who like me who compose for radio and TV adverts but don’t receive a cue sheet to fulfil the requirements to join.

As we live in an ‘independent’ age I’ve been working on getting this changed.

Just before Christmas I had a meeting with the head of MCPS , Paul Clements, and Gavin Burness from MCPS/MPA (Music Publishers Association) about changing the criteria so that those who are members of PRS can also join MCPS.

The meeting was extremely positive, and brought these issues, and others around a lack of knowledge in the industry to the fore.

I’m really pleased to say that hard work has paid off and that change is coming in the new year. This will mean that composers and writers will be able to join if their music is on services such as Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer etc.

They’ll also be some workshops and talks at The Ivors Academy on the importance ion mechanical royalties and how they work. If you’re a member, watch this space.

Knowledge is power in this industry (as in all things). Glad I’ve been able to create some positive change.

Anna