PRS launch website

Marillion, Jools Holland and Pete Waterman back new initiative

25 March 2009 - A new website designed to act as a body for songwriters to protect their music on the web was launched today.

The Performing Rights Society has set up Fairplayforcreators.com to highlight the "issues of online earnings."

This follows the row between YouTube and PRS over royalty rates, which resulted in the removal of thousands of music videos from the site.Artists, songwriters, broadcasters and record producer Pete Waterman have all posted messages on the site.

The intention of the site is to encourage internet giant Google to re-instate the premium music videos on YouTube.

Adrian Crooks, a spokesman for PRS told BBC 6 Music: "The website is also saying, along with music fans, 'Lets get the music back up on YouTube so that everyone can enjoy it, but lets make sure the people who have created the music are properly rewarded for providing the business benefit'.

"It's to demonstrate a strength of feeling amongst creators, to demonstrate also that very often PRS for music is seen as an organisation that stops access to the music and that's not what it does. That's not what it's there for."Artists backingMusic industry members from radio, television presenter Paul Gambaccini, Jools Holland and even the writers of the Eastenders and Peep Show theme-tunes are all behind the initiative.Music industry mogul Pete Waterman has joined the debate and stated: "YouTube is not alone in the online hall of shame where the worthy notion of greater consumer choice is used as a cloak to disguise the fact that copyright infringement happens on a grand scale."Keyboardist, Mark Kelly, for the British rock group Marillion who have been active since 1972 said YouTube is, "a great resource", but admitted he has seen little monetary benefit from his material being on the site."There have been maybe 10 million views of Marillion's material on YouTube and in my last PRS statement I received 0.6 pence from them," he explained."If we get 0.6 pence for 10 million views, we'd need billions of views to see any real money."

Marillion keyboardist

"There's a bit of a gap I think between what they should be paying and what they actually are paying, certainly in our case.

"I'm not sure what that works out at but if we get 0.6 pence for 10 million views, we'd need billions of views to see any real money."

In his post on the Fairplayforcreators.com site, Waterman claimed his PRS income for the year to September 2008 came to a total of £11, for more than 100 million plays on YouTube of Never Gonna Give You Up, which he co-wrote with Rick Astley.

YouTube respond

PRS revealed discussions are continuing with YouTube to put in place a new license.

Google has reacted to the initiative by issuing a statement: "We absolutely believe that artists and songwriters should make money from the use of their material. We previously had a license with the PRS to enable this to happen and we're very committed to reaching terms so that we can renew our license."

It continued: "YouTube cannot be expected to engage in a business in which it loses money every time a music video is played - that is simply not a sustainable business model."Georgie Rogers