The Court of Appeal has thrown out David Rowntree’s Blur drummer royalties appeal in the £200m dispute over how the Performing Right Society handles so-called black box royalties. The ruling ends his attempt to revive a collective claim that had already been struck out by the Competition Appeal Tribunal.
Rowntree v Performing Right Society
Rowntree, a solicitor and drummer with Blur, brought opt-out proceedings backed by Litigation Capital Management. The case challenged how the PRS distributes performance royalties that cannot be matched to a particular rights holder, with the claimants arguing that the system unfairly favoured music publishers over writers.
The Court of Appeal ruling came on 2026-06-29. Lord Justice Miles said the Competition Appeal Tribunal had not erred in law last year when it struck out the claim and refused to certify it, and Lord Justice Nugee and Lord Justice Zacaroli agreed.
August last year
In August last year, the Competition Appeal Tribunal found that the collective action had no reasonable prospect of success. It said the proposed class was drawn more widely than those owed black box royalties, and that even if the case succeeded the main beneficiaries might be the legal advisers and funder.
The tribunal also said that because the non-profit PRS would have to pay any award from royalties, the class was in effect suing itself. That left the claim with a structural problem before the Court of Appeal even reached the merits.
Lord Justice Miles
On appeal, Rowntree’s counsel said the tribunal was wrong to decide that the class was too broadly drawn and wrong to rule that the distribution method was not necessarily unfair or abusive. Lord Justice Miles rejected that approach, calling the case a “manifest oversimplification” and saying there was no counterfactual showing how the royalties in question should have been distributed.
He also said there was no evidence that the PRS distribution method imposed unfair trading conditions on its members. The PRS added that none of the claimants appeared to have tried to resolve the dispute through its own governance procedures, which makes the litigation route look more like a shortcut than a last resort.
PRS members
A PRS spokesperson said: “This class action was fundamentally flawed, and was a complete misrepresentation of our policies from the outset. It would have resulted in PRS members suing the society they collectively own, despite there being soaring costs attached and no logical basis for doing so.”
For David Rowntree, the practical result is stark: the collective route is shut down, and the £200m claim does not move forward in its current form. The open question is the one the courts did not answer — how exactly black box royalties should have been distributed instead.
