What does my statement mean?

These are your unique PPL membership details. Please quote your member ID whenever you contact PPL.

This is the total amount you have been paid.

The annual payment for PPL members, covers UK royalties for recordings which have been played in public and/or included in radio and TV broadcasts. This statement line will usually indicate which year the payment relates to (eg, 2010).

Following a decision by the Copyright Tribunal in October 2009, PPL had to revise its licence fees for playing background music in pubs, restaurants, hotels, shops, factories and offices. The revised fees had to be backdated to January 2006 and PPL had to offer refunds to affected licensees. The Copyright Tribunal decision means that each PPL member who received royalties for background music in 2006-09 was effectively overpaid. The deduction from your account has been calculated based on a percentage of the value of background music revenue paid to you in those particular years.

If for any reasons PPL cannot pay all the royalties due to a member, interest will be accrued and added to the original amount.

These are royalty payments from music licensing companies in other countries. Each of these lines on your statement shows (from left to right): the country where the royalties have been collected; the name of the music licensing company; the type of royalty; the period to which the payment relates; and what tax and other costs have been deducted. Please note that track breakdowns are not always available for these payments. You will only receive these payments if you have given an international mandate to PPL.

If you are a member of the BPI, AIM or FAC, some or all of your membership fees for these organisations are payable as a deduction from your PPL royalties. Details of any of these deductions which are applicable to you will be shown in this section.

There are two types of Withholding Tax that may be deducted. ‘Withholding Tax on Interest’ can be deducted on any interest payments you receive. ‘Withholding Tax on Royalty’ can be deducted on UK source income paid to certain members whose usual place of address is outside of the UK.