EMI reject new PRS streaming rate

Uh-oh - more trouble as the music industry tries to pretend that infinite supply won't drive down prices. EMI publishing have refused to accept the hard-won new PRS rate for online streaming, and so henceforward will opt out of having PRS collect their royalty earnings for them.

"We are not currently satisfied that the new rates - in particular the minima - proposed by PRS for Music for streaming services are appropriate", said EMI Music Publishing's general counsel for Europe Antony Bebawi.

Quite how EMI hopes to get any value from collecting its own royalties isn't clear - even at the old rate of 0.22p a stream, without the bulk processing power of a central clearing house it's arguable that EMI will wind up with even less than at the new PRS minimum rate of 0.085p by the time they've added on their administration costs.

It's also absurd because EMI are behaving as if the PRS organisation are the sort to have accepted a crappy deal. Given that at the start of negotiations the PRS were every bit as gung-ho and unrealistic as EMI are being now, you might think that someone might have worked out that 0.085p is all there is on the table.