A court says there will be no tax on streaming services in Canada–yet. (If you love Canadian music, you need to read this.)
You may have heard about an utterly bullsh*t campaign called Scrap the Streaming Tax. This is a scare tactic PR thing designed to convince Canadians that playing a levy/tax 5% of revenues on companies with $25 million in revenue. That includes Spotify, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Disney, and all the rest of them. They are all foreign companies sucking hard currency out of our economy without investing anything back into the cultural ecosystem.
Keep in mind that legacy media, which is to say Canadian radio (including satellite radio) and TV have poured millions and millions and millions of dollars over the decades into keep Canadian culture alive and thriving.
This campaign insists that this tax/levy will be passed onto consumers, making life even more unaffordable for Canadians. What utter horsesh*t.
Here are the facts:
FACT: A 5% levy is not even couch change for these streaming companies. Other countries have similar levies. Estimates that it would cost the streamers US$1.25 million each per year. Spotify’s market cap is US$92 BILLION. Doing the math, US$1.25 million is 0.000013% of the company’s market cap. And don’t even get me started on Apple. Or Disney. Or Netflix. Or Amazon.
FACT: If, say Spotify, wanted to pass along that 5% in the form of a subscription hike, we wouldn’t even notice. The cost of a premium Spotify subscription in Canada is $12.69. That’s about the same price as ONE CD and for that, you get complete access to 120 million songs. It’s the ultimate all-you-can-eat buffet. A 5% increase amounts to a whopping 64 CENTS.
That would bring the cost of a premium Spotify subscription to $13.25. That’s $7.68 cents a year. BIG F*CKING DEAL! For the price of a vente chai tea latte, a Spotify subscriber would support Canadian musicians, allowing them to continue to create, record, and tour. It’ll be invested in organizations like FACTOR and Starmaker. It’ll go towards creating new grants and funding models. It will share the financial burden carried now by legacy media–which, by the way, are struggling because so much of its advertising revenue is being siphoned away by those self-same foreign media/tech/streaming companies. This has cost thousands of Canadian jobs so far.
FACT: All the streaming services have been hiking their subscription rates, anyway. In fact, a couple of days after this bullsh*t campaign was announced, Spotify raised its Canadian price by 24 PER CENT! Gee, what happened to their concern about streaming becoming “unaffordable” to Canadians? Meanwhile, all the streaming services are under constant pressure by their investors and financial overlords to keep increasing prices.
What’s that? You don’t pay for Spotify because you’re happy with the “freemium” ad-supported tier? You mean there’s an option for not paying anything? So you’re not contributing already, huh?
FACT: This Scrap The Streaming Tax thing is one of the most dishonest and cynical corporate PR campaigns we’ve seen in a long time. Do NOT be fooled by this appeal. (It’s showing up a lot on Xitter, which should tell you something.)
Unfortunately, there’s been a wrinkle. This week, we’ve heard that the Federal Court of Appeal say that the streaming companies won’t have to pay a cent until the court hears their appeal of this CRTC decision.
The hearing will happen in June. Meanwhile, these companies will continue to make money off our culture without putting anything back. And their stupid scare campaign, which just floods the zone with misinformation and sh*t Steve Bannon-style will have some short-sighted Canadian music fans agreeing with them. This is no different that Elon Musk convincing dumb Americans that he has their best interests in mind.
Many music fans are always banging on about how Spotify doesn’t pay out fairly. This levy will help Canadian musicians in other ways. And how often have you complained that Netflix and Amazon are now running commercials? Wasn’t the promise of a streaming subscription a chance to be entertained without ads?
If 64 cents a month to support Canadian culture and thousands of struggling musicians is too much for you, then you and I have a problem. You’re not a music fan. You’re a leech. You’re on the side of multi-billion- and trillion-dollar foreign corporations who have the gall to cry poor.
