Performing Right Society

The Performing Right Society (PRS) is a non-profit membership organisation which collects licence fees from music users.  PRS then distributes the money to its members, the writers and publishers of music, and to affiliated societies worldwide.

DMW assisted the Performing Right Society (PRS) and the Mechanical Copyright Protection Society (MCPS) on a number of projects during a period of intense business change and uncertainty.

Our work included developing an IS strategy for the MCPS-PRS Alliance in response to changes in the marketplace, namely:

• The introduction of  EU regulations to break up the existing effective monopoly of the European collecting societies, thus introducing competition into the market;
• Significant reduction in CD sales;
• Exponential growth of digital music downloads;
• Proliferation of digital TV and radio channels.

The strategy had to ensure the Alliance could maintain their high levels of service whilst reducing the transaction costs associated with matching songs to composers and publishers and arranging for them to be paid appropriately.

 We have also performed a number of projects relating to IT operations:

• A fitness assessment of the society's IT organisation, technology and processes leading to a number of cost saving measures.
• A storage architecture project to enable the society to cope with the rapidly increasing data volumes brought about by a massive increase in online sales and the proliferation of digital broadcast channels.