Gigs and Clubs Schemers

Today is PRS day for many musicians, i.e. the hard grafted royalty payment for the songs that they have written and played live finally comes through for the previous three months. As an unsigned artist yet to play the big venues of the country (the Barrowlands, Carling Academys etc), this usually means that for every 30 minute slot in a venue deemed a pub or a club by the PRS you will earn roughly a fiver.

How this works is that after you have played a minimum of 10 'gigs' (I'll get on to that in a minute), you submit a spreadsheet containing these 10 venues you played in and a 'standard setlist'. PRS then collate all this information and then send out the cash a few months later. Easy, simple, and fair. Or is it?

The 'standard setlist' is the part that really pisses me off. I have a great irritation for those bands that I'll pay money to go and see who have a stale, static setlist (say Green Day 1995-2004), and as a result I always push for any gig that I play to have an interesting and dynamic set list. Thus, if you saw me in June at The 13th Note (30 minute stage time), the show would be completely different to August at The Vale (1hr 15 minute stage time). Not in the eyes of the PRS it wouldn't.

For all the PRS know I could have registered. say 8 songs (content, lyrics, music, existence not important) listed them alphabetically and then submitted a list of the venues I played in and happily received my fiver per gig.

What about when I put in a spur of the moment cover of Chris T-T's The Huntsman, or Springsteen's No Surrender? PRS would love to show that they care about collecting the royalties for each performance of each members works, however, due to the 'standard setlist' the gigs and clubs scheme doesn't have scope for this. Extend this idea to where someone played one of my songs at their gigs (say El Bastardos or Roscoe Vacant, or after just a lawsuit about Peter, Jimmy Richards), would I get what I was due as a songwriter?

This isn't to mention the fact that the PRS don't seem to have any fact checking on the list of venues that is submitted to this scheme. I could, with my list of 8 songs, go through the local gig guide, find out venues that have gigs running (or open mic nights, hell that's where original work can be performed), sit in my underpants and compile spreadsheet upon spreadsheet of 10 gigs that I hypothetically played.

A few months later, a fiver would come in for each of these and I could do my Christmas shopping. I guess, if I did it well enough, I could probably give up my job and have the life of a struggling musician, with the PRS paying the bills (step further, I could possibly get the council to pay for this as I wouldn't have a real job anymore).

You may have read this and thought, well Dave, why are you complaining? If it is how you say it is, then the PRS are giving out free money and you'd be a fool to reject it.

 The main thing that pisses me off with this system is that, yes the PRS are giving out free money to those who claim to have written music, but without the validation checks, it devalues the idea of being a songwriter. This isn't me saying that to be a songwriter you need to make money out of it. I'm coming from the same lines as the arguments about TV music competitions and the like. It creates a devalued and simplified notion of what it is to be an artist who writes music, plays proper shows, travels the country and puts in hard work.

Is this all worth a fiver?