PRS for Music and Soundtrack Put Playback Data Closer to Royalty Decisions

PRS for Music is bringing track-by-track playback data from Soundtrack into its royalty distributions for music played in UK businesses. From December 2026, PRS says it will incorporate data from around 7,000 shops, bars and public spaces using the B2B streaming service when paying songwriters, composers and music publishers.

The immediate benefit is clear. Where a collection society knows what was actually played, it can rely less on comparable data used to estimate music use. That is a meaningful shift for the works played through Soundtrack in those premises: the record of use moves closer to the point where the music was heard.

A better record still runs through a central system

Playback evidence has often sat at a distance from royalty allocation. A venue plays music, a service may have a record of it, and a collection society must turn incomplete information into a distribution. PRS and Soundtrack are narrowing that gap by making the business-music service’s play data part of the distribution workflow.

But better data does not automatically change who controls the system. Soundtrack supplies the records; PRS determines how those records enter its distributions. Creators receive a more detailed route to recognition for this use, yet the key operating layers—data collection, rules and the route by which use enters royalty distributions—remain inside organizations the creator does not operate.

That is the larger change worth watching. More of the creator’s economic life is becoming machine-readable and folded into intermediary-run environments. The question is not whether accurate playback data is useful. It is why the records that describe a creator’s work must live primarily inside disconnected services before the creator can be recognized.

The case for creator-controlled catalog context

A creator-controlled infrastructure does not eliminate the need for reliable reporting from a venue or music service. It changes where the durable context around a work begins. Rather than treating a work’s identity and release context as information that only becomes useful inside a distributor, collection society or streaming service, that context can originate with the creator and persist beyond any one intermediary.

Certifyd is building in that direction. Certifyd Core, currently in beta, maintains catalog context for works and releases; those catalog records can inform Certifyd profiles, discovery, commerce and Awards surfaces. That is not a replacement for PRS distributions or Soundtrack’s reporting. It is a different architectural starting point: the creator’s record of their work is not meant to be merely an account entry inside someone else’s operating environment.

As direct usage data becomes more important, the music business will need stronger connections between a reported play and the work it represents. The durable opportunity is not simply to make central systems better informed. It is to move more of the foundational record of creative work toward infrastructure creators can participate in operating themselves.

Accuracy is only one part of the argument

PRS’s partnership with Soundtrack is a practical improvement in how a defined set of public performances can be reflected in royalty distributions. It also makes the dependency visible: a creator’s recognition depends on a chain of services capturing, sharing and interpreting the right information.

For creators, partners and investors, the next question is whether that chain remains a series of closed handoffs or becomes a network where the creator’s work and catalog context have a durable home of their own. Better playback data matters now. Creator-operated infrastructure matters because it changes who has a stake in the record that follows the work.

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Originally published on Certifyd.