IN SESSION: Mark Davyd from the Music Venue Trust Talks About How PRS for Music Refuse to Show Artists The Money

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In this interview, Mark Davyd, founder and CEO of Music Venue Trust, mentions the "famous" and famously misattributed Hunter S. Thompson quote about the music industry. It goes "The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."

It's now common knowledge that Thompson didn't actually say this, or at the very least if he did it wasn't about the music industry. Mark acknowledges as much in this interview. And yet, it remains a perfect summation of the music industry at large even today, and in this interview Mark expounds upon that at length.

In April 2026 he unleashed a series of 4 Substack posts which shone a light on the dodgy dealings of the UK's performing rights body PRS for Music. In them, he details how each year millions of pounds earmarked for artists who perform in grassroots music venues is "held" by PRS because they are unable to attribute it to anyone — ostensibly because many of the artists who are due it have never signed up to PRS, and thus the money goes unclaimed. After 3 years, this money is then distributed to the largest music publishers and most successful songwriters in the world.

The true figure is difficult to ascertain due to the opaque nature of PRS' reporting, but it is estimated to be around £18m — more than the combined profit generated by all 800+ grassroots music venues in the UK each year. What's happening is, in effect, a reverse Robin Hood scenario where huge amounts of money are being transferred to the most high-profile, wealthiest musicians and publishers.

In this episode we dive deep into those 4 articles with Mark, getting to the heart of all that is rotten with the current PRS model, the organisation's response, and some suggestions for how it might be fixed.

You can read Mark's articles here:
Part 1: https://markdavyd.substack.com/p/prs-for-music-and-the-grassroots
Part 2: https://markdavyd.substack.com/p/prs-for-music-and-the-grassroots-5a0
Part 3: https://markdavyd.substack.com/p/prs-for-music-and-the-grassroots-618
Part 4: https://markdavyd.substack.com/p/prs-for-music-and-the-grassroots-3d9

Highlights:

00:00 Grassroots Cash Grab

00:24 Meet the Hosts

01:46 What Music Venues Trust Does

03:30 COVID Crisis Response

07:23 Venue People Helping Venues

09:16 Why PRS Matters Here

12:45 How PRS Works

16:02 Unclaimed Royalties Problem

21:35 Archaic Setlist System

23:22 Tariff LP vs Tariff P

27:35 Real World Money Example

30:40 Show Me the Money

32:00 Unclaimed Royalties Black Box

32:58 Venue Economics And Losses

34:00 Rules Court Case And Publishers

35:53 Broken Reform Promises

39:20 Why PRS Won't Change

42:00 Estimated Bills And CCJs

44:44 Scale Of Grassroots Impact

48:18 Audio Recognition Solution

55:08 PRS Rebuttals And Backlash

59:16 Wrap Up And Where To Read