Music Venue Trust (MVT) and Audoo, a public performance royalty reporting technology company, published the results of a pilot in UK grassroots venues on 15 October 2026. Of 623 hours of live music measured in August and September, the meters identified 134, or 21%, as known songs or works.
What the pilot measured
According to MVT's statement, the technology takes the signal from the mixing desk and identifies songs without set lists or paperwork. It recognised 2,238 performances, including 23 tribute-band sets with more than 380 songs. In September it detected 1,190 different live songs, and 87% were played only once. For recorded music, it logged 10,943 tracks by 6,248 artists. No artist was played in more than 16 of the 64 venues that supplied data that month. Pollstar published the same figures the same day, along with the announcement of the expanded study.
What the figure does not say
The 21% does not mean the other 79% is unregistered music. The pilot does not set that proportion: the unidentified audio may include speech between songs and other material. PRS for Music, speaking to Music Week, argues that recognition has not yet been shown to work reliably for live music in these venues, that the results do not match the set lists and repertoire information it receives from members and venues, and that it is waiting for the data to be published.
MVT reads the figure as consistent with its long-held estimate: between 20% and 34% of what is played in these venues would be registered repertoire. It also challenges what it describes as PRS's assumption that all of that music is registered. "Songwriters must be paid when their music is performed, but that depends on knowing what was actually played," says Steve Robbins, Audoo's chief technology officer.
The dispute, then, is not about a percentage but about what data is used to distribute what small venues pay. MVT says it rests on an assumption; PRS says live measurement is not yet reliable. The next measurement comes with a study across more than 100 grassroots venues between October and December 2026, with results expected in January 2027.
On costs, the other open issue for British nightlife is the business rates cut that reaches live music venues but leaves nightclubs out. If you are organising events there, see also our guide to event licences in the UK.