Music royalties fall for first time

The amount of music royalties paid out to artists has fallen for the first time, according to the Performing Rights Society.

The organisation, which represents 75,000 songwriters, composers and music publishers in the UK, stated that the figure paid out has fallen by 1%.

Blaming the decline in physical DVD and CD sales, the PRS also claimed that the growth of legal downloads has recently started to slow.

Biffy Clyro frontman Simon Neil spoke out against the slump. "The thing about PRS is for a lot of bands, it's the only way you make money," he told Radio 1's Newsbeat.

"In our first six years of being in a band that was the only kind of income we had. It's the bread and butter for bands. It's almost your only guaranteed source of income."

Explaining reasons for the slump in royalties, chief executive of PRS for Music Robert Ashcroft stated: "The loss of high street outlets, the slowdown in physical music sales as well as the difficulty in licensing music usage online has meant for the first time we've seen royalties collected dip."

The PRS has now called for more support to be allocated to develop legal downloading sites. One such scheme has been proposed in France.

The French government has developed a new programme where French citizens between the ages of 12 and 25 will be able to enroll and receive a prepaid card that will subsidise half of the mp3 purchase when used to buy music legally online. The intention is to get the youth of today into the habit of purchasing music online, rather than illegally downloading it.