PPL chair Richard James Burgess sets out three priorities for the licensing body

Dr Richard James Burgess MBE, chair of the UK licensing company PPL, has set out how he wants the organisation to grow. In a column published on 27 October 2026, he summed up his approach in one line: "embrace technology and respect rights," according to Music Business Worldwide.

Burgess has spent most of his working life in music, first as a performer. He was the drummer, singer and driving force of the band Landscape, whose single "Einstein a Go-Go" reached the UK Top 5. He is also credited with coining the term "New Romantic", the name for the early 1980s British pop style of bold clothes and synthesisers.

He helped build instruments as well as records. Burgess co-developed the Simmons SDS-V electronic drum kit with engineer Dave Simmons. He later worked as a producer, with credits that include the first two Spandau albums.

His career also moved into the business side. He ran business operations at the Smithsonian Folkways label, and he led A2IM, the American Association of Independent Music, for a decade. He stepped down from A2IM at the end of 2025. He became chair of PPL on 5 January 2026, succeeding John Smith OBE.

PPL is the company that licenses recorded music on behalf of performers and rights holders. It collects fees when recordings are played in public, on the radio and in other settings, then passes the money on to the people who made the music.

PPL collections exceeded £315 million in 2025, and revenues rose 4.75% on the year, according to Music Business Worldwide. A rise of that size is a modest one, but for a body that pays out money to thousands of performers, every percentage point is a sum that reaches real households.

Burgess named three main areas for growth. The first is collecting more money from international use of British recordings. The second is making sure that music which should be licensed is licensed. The third is using better data and technology to work out who is owed what, and to pay it out more efficiently.

Peter Leathem is chief executive of PPL. Jez Bell is chief licensing officer, Mark Douglas is chief information officer, and Anne-Marie Pearce was appointed chief financial officer in November 2025.

Each of the three goals sounds simple. Carrying them out is harder, especially across borders where rules, rates and record-keeping differ from one country to the next. For a session musician or a singer whose song plays in a shop or on a regional station, better tracking can decide whether a payment arrives at all.