Electronic music artists, producers and songwriters are missing out on millions of pounds of lost revenue in the UK, after their music appears in DJ sets but the subsequent royalties are not properly distributed, according to new research.
The Berlin-based Fair Play initiative has found that only 28% of the fees paid by the average UK nightclub are being distributed correctly to artists. More than £5.7m a year is allegedly being misallocated by performing rights organisations, and paid out to the wrong people.
“What we’re seeing in the industry is a fundamental imbalance,” says Ethan Holben, who led the project at Fair Play. “DJs can command substantial fees for playing other people’s music, yet the producers whose tracks are being played in clubs and festivals around the world often make little or nothing. Many don’t even know their music is being played.”
Artists in genres such as R&B, rap and metal – all of which have their own nightlife venues – will also be affected, and the research suggests that independent and underground artists are likely to be hardest hit.
When detailed tracklist information doesn’t exist for a given DJ set, rights organisations will instead extrapolate from the data produced by other venues, send staff to conduct in-person spot checks, or use radio playlists as a proxy. Precise details of these calculations remain confidential to prevent people gaming the system.
Rights organisations express confidence in these methods but Fair Play estimates that 50% of these “analogous” payments are in fact inaccurate, and are concerned that “smaller venues and underground scenes subsidise mainstream producers whose music appears on radio playlists,” citing a 2019 DJ Mag article which reported that 60% of tracks played in Spanish clubs never make it to radio at all.
“The fundamental issue is architectural,” says Holben. “Many collective management organisations [that distribute royalties] are over 100 years old, and the music industry is still oriented around bands and artists performing their own songs. The performance rights system and submission processes are still largely built around this too, despite electronic music now being one of the top genres both in listenership and festival bookings.”
Other fees, such as those levied on venues to play music, or on songwriters to be able to claim royalties in the first place, can be similarly contentious. Last year, artists including the Jesus and Mary Chain and Robert Fripp sued PRS for Music, the UK’s biggest performing rights society (who manage royalty distribution), over terms which they claim unfairly benefit stadium and arena-sized acts. PRS said it would “vigorously defend” that lawsuit.
PRS has also cast doubt on Fair Play’s findings, claiming that their “headline percentage is built on partial inputs”. The real problem, PRS argues, is a lack of data from venues and DJs about the music they’re playing: “Without comprehensive track-level logs across all UK dance floors, any single figure is indicative, not definitive.”
Statistics from Fair Play back this up. When venues install music recognition technology (similar to the music-identifying app Shazam) payments to artists are made with 90% accuracy, compared to the current UK-wide average of 36%. However, fewer than 7% of UK clubs have installed these systems: perhaps reflecting the razor-thin margins on which many operate, and the £20,000 a year that a medium-sized club will already be paying to bodies like PRS.
A cheaper and simpler solution – getting DJs to file accurate tracklists with performing rights societies – results in 95% payment accuracy. And yet Fair Play found that only 5% of DJs in the UK do this regularly (despite 42% claiming to when asked as part of a global survey earlier in 2025). Live acts receive royalties for playing their own songs, so it’s in their interests to fill in PRS paperwork after every gig. For the average DJ, playing a set of 97% other people’s music, there’s rarely any benefit beyond altruism.
“Most DJs just don’t care that much,” says Josh Doherty, who records as Posthuman and DJs under the I Love Acid banner. “It’s purely a question of laziness and ethics, particularly the new generation of DJs that don’t even have to buy records any more, so they’re not financially invested in that part of the industry.”
And yet Doherty also underlines why reform is so desperately needed: when three of his tracks were played regularly by another DJ during their warm-up set for a stadium dance act’s UK tour, Doherty ended up with a cheque from PRS for thousands of pounds. 75% of independent musicians lose money releasing music, says Ethan Holben. “Imagine if they could just break even.”
