Blur drummer loses court battle for £200 million in unpaid royalties

Blur drummer David Rowntree has lost a bid to continue a legal battle over the distribution of up to £200 million in music royalties.

The dismissal for the Court of Appeal brings and end to Rowntree’s attempt to bring a legal claim on behalf of 160,000 songwriters against the Performing Right Society (PRS), the organisation responsible for collecting and distributing royalties.

He alleged that PRS’s distribution of black-box royalties - funds that cannot be matched to specific musical works or individuals – was disproportionately biased against songwriters/

He said that the unidentified royalties were paid to producers rather than songwriters, potentially taking away up to £200 million in unpaid earnings.

The proposed claim was rejected in the Competition Appeal Tribunal in August 2025, finding it had no reasonable prospect of success.

Rowntree appealed the decision, with his legal team arguing that the tribunal had “erred in law."

The PRS opposed the appeal, claiming that the challenge is “unsustainable” and that the legal action “is incoherent and discloses no arguable claim.”

PRS said that black box royalties are those that the body collects but cannot match to a musical work or pay to an individual because of “data problems”, adding that it distributes the royalties “pro rata to its distribution of royalties which can be matched”.

Court of Appeal judges dismissed the appeal in a ruling published on Monday.

In the ruling, Lord Justice Miles said that a “true” distribution of these royalties are unknowable, “because the root of the black box royalties problem is the absence of accurate information; and, conversely, if accurate information were available, the relevant royalties would be matched”.

He added that Rowntree had not set out a plausible approach that would be more accurate or fairer, and that the data problems at the centre of the dispute meant there was no basis for proposing a better method of distribution.