Westbury Music and Mute Song join IMPEL

PRS for Music’s IMPEL initiative now numbers 18 indie publishers. Over £5m royalties distributed to date for all independent publishers

PRS for Music has announced that Westbury Music and Mute Song are the latest publishers to sign up to its Independent Music Publishers’ European Licensing (IMPEL) initiative.  Repertoire from the two publishers will be included in the society’s pan-European digital licences from 1st July onwards.

Set up in 2010 IMPEL directly licenses Anglo-American online and mobile mechanical rights to new and existing pan-European digital services on behalf of its publisher members along with the matching performing rights. Together with the repertoire licensed from its ‘Friends of IMPEL’ members, PRS for Music has now distributed royalties in excess of £5m to independent publishers.

We are pleased to report a number of positives including a significantly improved processing speed for IMPEL distributions. In some cases it has taken just six months from music use in Europe to royalties hitting bank accounts and as a result we are seeing ever more interest from the independent publisher community. We have also now distributed £5million in royalties which is proof the system is working better and we’re looking forward to welcoming more members in the near future.

We have followed IMPEL from the start and having seen the successes to date we felt this was the right time to join. We feel this is the way forward for digital licensing and are optimistic for the future of this venture.