Myth check: "Joining a PRO is only worth it for big artists"

The claim: Signing up with a performing right organisation (PRO) such as IPRS, PRS, ASCAP or BMI only makes sense once you are a big name. For everyone else the fees and paperwork cost more than you get back.

Verdict: false. Joining is cheap or free, the published payout thresholds are low, and the societies themselves frame the decision around a few pounds of yearly income, not fame. The real cost of staying out is royalties nobody else will collect for you.

Where it spread

The idea is folk wisdom in bedroom-producer forums: PROs feel like a club for chart writers, and their fee pages are confusing. Guides contradict each other on prices (one Musosoup guide gives ASCAP's fee as both £50 and $50 in the same article), which makes "not worth it yet" an easy default.

What the evidence says

PRS sets the bar at £100 a year, not at fame. PRS for Music's join page says writers pay "a one-off joining fee of £100" for lifetime membership, with MCPS a separate one-off £100. Its help page says: "We recommend you join when you're likely to earn more than £100 in royalties over a year." The join page adds that earnings are paid once they exceed a minimum of £30 in the UK or £60 internationally, and that in 2025 "nearly 7,000 members" were paid for the first time.

BMI writers pay nothing. A Musosoup guide says BMI "offers free membership for songwriters" and charges publishers a one-off $150 (solo) or $250 (partnerships). The same guide puts ASCAP at a one-off $50; reports on whether ASCAP has since waived its writer fee conflict, so check ascap.com before paying [unverified].

IPRS: the fee is murky, the logic is the same. We could not find a published IPRS fee schedule we could open [unverified]. IPRS has run enrolment drives aimed at independents, including a one-time free membership offer at the 2024 Asia Music Summit. IPRS CEO Rumpa Banerjee told the Deccan Chronicle that "if you are independent, or your label isn't affiliated, your royalties won't be tracked unless you do it yourself."

What we think

The myth has the economics backwards. A one-off fee of £100, or nothing at BMI, is a small bet next to a lifetime of performance royalties from radio, venues, TV syncs and streaming. Big artists have publishers who chase this money for them; it is the independent writer who loses most by skipping registration, which is exactly Banerjee's point.

The honest caveat: if your songs are not played anywhere in public, broadcast or streamed, there is little to collect yet, and PRS's own "£100 a year" rule is a sensible trigger. But the moment you have a release, a sync or regular gigs, join the society in your territory, register every work, and register your live setlists. Pick one PRO per territory and read its current fee page yourself, because third-party guides go stale fast.