The CRTC is looking at Cancon rules for music streamers

Since 1971, Canadian radio stations have had to devote a certain percentage of their playlists to Canadian music. The minimum required level started at 30% but has since increased to 35%. Some radio stations even promised 40% with their license.

There is NOTHING more important to the CRTC than radio Cancon levels. Stations that have failed to meet these requirements have had their license terms shortened and, in a few rare cases, revoked. That puts them out of business.

Why? Two reasons. Broadcast frequencies are public property in Canada. Radio stations are granted the use of those frequencies in exchange for certain obligations, like promoting Canadian talent. Second, we live next door to the greatest exporter of popular culture in the known universe. If we don’t have some kind of protection against creeping Americanism, the Canadian music industry would be decimated. That can’t happen.

Radio stations may grumble from time to time about Cancon, but the fact is that they’re a necessary part of making sure that Canadian musicians tell their stories to other Canadians. It’s just part of doing business in this country.

Music streamers, however, do not have to worry about Cancon rules. Even though they operate in this country, Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, and the rest of them have ZERO Cancon obligations. They siphon Canadian dollars out of the country without putting anything back into the system to ensure that our music industry continues to exist and artists get to be heard.

This CRTC is going to look at the whole Cancon situation with hearings at its HQ in Gatineau, Quebec. They continue until September 29. Here’s what we already know.

• There will be no 35% regulation for streamers. That doesn’t make sense.
• The CRTC is looking for ways for streamers to make “contributions similar to content requirements on Canadian musical selections for most online undertakings, including on-demand streaming services.”
• Streamers should also “contribute to the discoverability of Canadian, French-language, and Indigenous music either through financial contributions or through initiatives targeting the promotion and exposure of these songs to their users.”

The streamers are dead against all this, saying that the technology has “created tremendous value for the Canadian music industry and its artists following years of decline and loss to piracy…Streaming services effectively pay 8.5 times more of their revenues directly to music rightsholders than the commercial radio sector does, and pay more overall, even taking into account commercial radio’s Canadian Content Development…contributes.”

Canadian radio broadcasters cry BS on this. If the CRTC won’t force the streamers into line with new regulations, it should look at stations’ current obligations. In other words, reduce the legal Cancon levels to something less than they are now. The Canadian Association of Broadcasters floated a reduction from 35% to 10%, but that will never fly for so many reasons. It also concedes that 25% is a more “natural” level.

For those following along, the 25% proposal has been out there for decades, including the last time I participated in a CRTC hearing back in 2005. We broadcasters also proposed a special category for emerging artists, which would give radio stations extra credit for playing emerging and unfamiliar music. Both ideas were harpooned upon delivery.

Maybe this time.