U.K. rights management orgs PRS for Music and PPL have partnered with music tech company Audoo to help improve public performance royalty distributions.

As part of the partnership, Audoo’s audio meters have been installed in businesses across the U.K., including cafés, bars, hair salons and restaurants. Using smart plug-in technology, the meters identify background music being played and report the usage back to PRS and PPL in quasi-real-time. They are GDPR-compliant and don’t capture any non-music audio.

They aim to enhance distribution efficiency and deliver optimum payments for PRS and PPL’s 300k collective members.

Tim Arber, PRS for Music's director of Operational Improvement, called the partnership "integral" to the org reaching its ambition to pay out over £1b to members annually in the next few years.

The meters, said PPL's Head of Distribution Russell Chant, "complement our existing suite of advanced technological tools and public performance music usage data, offering us a further way to check that our distributions are as accurate as possible."

Founded in the U.K. in 2018, Audoo has worked with other CMOs and PROs around the world, including GEMA in Germany, APRA AMCOS in Australia and JASRAC in Japan.