The UK Performing Rights Society for Music (PRS), which represents 65,000 songwriters, composers and music publishers, has today announced a 2.6% rise in annual revenues to £623m. Online revenues from legal licensed digital music services grew 72.7% to £30.4m. Wait, wasn’t illegal P2P file sharing by broadband ISP users supposed to be killing music? Hmm.

Similarly back in January the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) issued its Digital Music Report 2010, which revealed that global digital music trade revenues reached £2.6 billion (up 12%) in 2009 (here). IFPI still managed to blame piracy for a decline, despite the obvious contradiction.


Unlike most other reports the PRS does at least manage to avoid making the same contradictions as IFPI and other rights holders have; often speaking of decline at the alleged behest of piracy while at the same time reporting growing revenues from digital downloads. Presenting the worst case scenario is obviously beneficial for them and helps when writing the government’s copyright policy, but it may not be an entirely accurate representation.