Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society

PRS for Music Limited (formerly The MCPS-PRS Alliance Limited) is the UK’s leading collection society, bringing together two collection societies: the Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society (MCPS) and the Performing Right Society (PRS).It undertakes collective rights management for musical works on behalf of its 118,000 members. PRS for Music was formed in 1997 following the MCPS-PRS Alliance. In 2013, PRS and MCPS-PRS Alliance realigned their brands and became PRS for Music.

PRS represents their songwriter, composer and music publisher members’ performing rights, and collects royalties on their behalf whenever their music is played or performed publicly.

MCPS also represents songwriters, composers and music publishers – representing their mechanical rights, and collects royalties whenever their music is reproduced as a physical product – this includes CDs, DVDs, digital downloads and broadcast or online.

PRS (Performing Right Society) and MCPS (Mechanical Copyright Protection Society) are two separate collection societies with PRS running its own operations, providing services to MCPS under the name PRS for Music.

The Performing Right Society was founded in 1914 by a group of music publishers, to protect the value of copyright and to help provide an income for composers, songwriters and music publishers. At the time, PRS collected fees for live performance from sheet music.

PRS was distinct from both the activities of the Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society which was originally founded in 1910, and the Phonographic Performance Limited (PPL), founded in 1934 by Decca and EMI.

The Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society began as Mecolico, the Mechanical Copyright Licenses Company, which was founded in 1910 in anticipation of the Copyright Act of 1911. Mecolico licensed the mechanical rights within musical works and merged with the Copyright Protection Society in 1924. While Phonographic Performance Limited (PPL) collected fees for playing gramophone recordings.

Another agency, the British Copyright Protection Company or Britico was founded in 1932 by Alphonse Tournier, specialising on collecting royalties in the UK on French and German musical copyright, and becoming the British Copyright Protection Association in 1962. This company, Britico, started to share computer facilities with PRS in 1970.

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