The Players
PPL, PRS and MCPS sound interchangeable, and most artists mix them up. Each collects a different royalty from a different part of your music — and the only way to be paid all of it is to be known to all of them.
The key idea
When you put out a song, there are two separate pieces of property inside it, and the law treats them as two different copyrights.
The first is the compositionThe song itself — the melody, chords and lyrics. It exists separately from any particular recording of it. A cover version is a new recording of the same composition. — the song you wrote, in the abstract. The second is the recordingThe specific recorded version you made — also called the "master". It's a separate copyright from the song written into it., or master — the version you actually released. Same track, two copyrights, owned and paid out separately.
That split is why there's more than one society. Some collect for the song; one collects for the recording. Write and record your own music and you own both — so money is owed from both, and registering with only one body leaves the other half unclaimed.
Two copyrights, collected by different people.
Copyright
The composition — what you wrote.
Paid toSongwriters & publishers
Copyright
The master — the version you released.
Paid toPerformers & the recording's owner
One distinction is easy to miss: PPL handles the broadcast and public-play money for your recording, while the on-demand streaming money for the recording comes through whoever distributes you (DistroKid, TuneCore and so on).
PRS and MCPS sit under the same roof (“PRS for Music”) but are separate memberships. PPL is a different organisation entirely. Here's each in a sentence.
PRS
Collects performance royaltiesMoney earned when a song is played to the public — broadcast on radio or TV, streamed, performed live, or played in a venue or shop. on the song. Triggered whenever your composition is broadcast, streamed, performed live, or played in public. Pays songwriters, composers and publishers.
MCPS
Collects mechanical royaltiesMoney earned when a song is reproduced or copied — pressed to CD/vinyl, downloaded, or the "mechanical" portion of a stream. on the song — the right to reproduce it. Triggered by physical copies, downloads, and the mechanical share of streams. Also pays songwriters, composers and publishers.
PPL
Collects on the recording — these are neighbouring rightsThe rights of performers and the recording's owner, as distinct from the songwriter's rights. PPL collects these when a recording is broadcast or played in public.. Triggered when your recording is broadcast or played in public. Pays the performers on it and whoever owns the master.
PPL has two memberships: one as a performer (everyone who played on the track, including session musicians) and one as the recording rights-holder (the owner of the master). A self-releasing artist is usually both, and needs both to collect the full amount.
Coming soon
Knowing who collects what is step one. Being registered with each of them is step two — the same details, typed three times. REGISTAR is an app that does it once.
PRS paid £1.07bn to writers and publishers in 2025; PPL distributed £277.7m to performers. Separate organisations, separate databases — being known to one tells the other nothing about you. PRS and PPL 2025 results.
One email when it's ready. Nothing else. How we handle your data.
Say you wrote and recorded a single — we'll call it “Static Light” — and released it yourself. Here's what each kind of play triggers.
“Static Light” · one self-released single
Someone streams it on Spotify
Pays PRS (your writer's share) and MCPS (the mechanical share) for the song — and the recording's streaming money comes through your distributor.
It gets played on BBC Radio 1
Pays PRS for the song and PPL for the recording — and the PPL money splits again between you as the performer and you as the recording's owner.
It plays over the speakers in a clothes shop
Pays PRS for the song and PPL for the recording, both funded by the public-performance licence that shop is required to hold.
One radio play can pay you twice — once as a writer, once for the recording — but only if you're registered with both PRS and PPL. Register with only one and you collect half of what's owed.
A plain-English walkthrough of signing up to each body and registering your own work — field by field, no jargon left unexplained.
See the walkthrough →“I'm on Spotify, so I'm covered.” “My distributor handles it.” Common beliefs that cost artists the money covered here.
See what trips people up →Coming soon
Three organisations, three sets of forms, and the same song details re-typed into each. REGISTAR is an app that handles all three, so you never have to learn three systems.
One email when it's ready. Nothing else. How we handle your data.