Drink Talking: Peter Leathem

PPL's new tariff has only been set after consultation with the trade says Peter Leathem, director of legal and business affairs at PPL.

PPL (the UK collecting society for record companies and performers) has recently announced a revised licensing tariff for publicly performing sound recordings as background music in pubs and bars. Unfortunately, this has been the subject of a considerable amount of inaccurate and misleading information.

The revised tariff is the product of a detailed review and consultation that PPL launched in 2003. The thousands of individual music users and numerous trade associations (including the British Beer & Pub Association) that PPL consulted felt that larger businesses should pay more than smaller businesses. They also wanted a simple tariff, which charges the same fee regardless of whether the licensee uses the radio, CDs or some other means of playing sound recordings.

PPL has reflected these key principles in the revised tariff with the result that licensees will, to some extent, pay more than before. However, this does not mean that the revised tariff is unfair or excessive.

The tariff effectively charges a pub £100 for each 100 square metres of audible area. For example, a pub with an audible area of 300 square metres will pay £300 a year (less than £1 a day) for access to PPL's repertoire of thousands of sound recordings. Pubs and bars should also note that the tariff includes a concessionary discount for certain radio/TV users. Further, to help licensees adjust, PPL's transitional arrangements effectively delay the impact of the revised tariff for a further year.

Whether sound recordings are played is a commercial decision for all pubs and bars to make. If a pub with an audible area of 300 square metres does not feel that it can obtain a commercial benefit in excess of £1 a day from playing sound recordings, it can choose not to.

However, the importance of playing sound recordings in pubs and bars was stressed repeatedly by the music users and trade associations PPL consulted.