Live Performance Income Tracking

Live Touring for many major artists is often the backbone of an artist’s income stream. Tours can span multiple territories and continents, with performances in stadiums and arenas around the world. When an artist also writes and performs their own songs, monies will be generated and will increase the overall income derived from the tour because of the royalties collected and distributed by the local copyright societies in the territories.

For each show, licences need to be obtained by the promoter of the show/s from the local copyright society. Each local society in each territory operates under it’s own rules and tariffs for these licences and covers the writer and music publishing performance income generated by the songs performed in a set list. The rules applied vary from territory to territory. The licence income is usually based on a % of box office, which is then attributed to each song and writer/s of that song (under the rules of that society) and after local society deductions and in some cases discounts for the promoters. There can be many points where income can ‘bleed’, so the writer/s and publishers do not receive the full or correct amount. The impact of this can result in a considerable reduction in publishing income which in turn has an impact on the touring costs and budgets that are so carefully prepared prior to a major tour.

Maria Forte has worked closely with Iron Maiden and Phantom Music Management since 2012 to track the band’s live performance monies across the world over all the tours since that period. She has also worked with BMG Rights Management and Roger Waters’ management on the ‘Us And Them’ world tour. In each case, working closely with the artist managements (for the writers/artist), the promoters, the PRS and the local societies to ensure that the correct amounts are applied, paid and finally distributed to the writers.