Music

What Is SOCAN and What Does It Do?

Every country has what’s called performing rights organziations (PROs) whose job is to collect money on behalf of their members when it comes to public performances.  

Canada has SOCAN (the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada) and they look out for the financial interests of more than 115,000 members.  That includes getting businesses to pony up a few bucks each year for the privilege of playing music in the workplace.

The Globe and Mail has a Q&A with SOCAN head Eric Baptiste:

How do you describe what SOCAN does?

We connect people who create music with people who use music as part of their business. We explain to the businesses why they need to get a licence, and why the money that they contribute toward that licence is important to the songwriters and composers. Some of our members are extremely successful, but most of them are also small business people. They take a risk, come up with an idea for music or lyrics, and they bring that to the marketplace and they expect to get some reward for that.

How important is music to businesses that use it?

If you imagine shopping or going to a restaurant without music in the background … the experience would be extremely different. In some cases, music is the core of a business – a music radio station, for example. We license directly or indirectly to 125,000 businesses in Canada, and most of them are small. They are bars and shops and dentists. Some are big, like the big media groups.

Why should store owners pay to have music playing in their shops?

There are lots of surveys that show music enhances the consumer’s experience and increases the business for the owner. They sell more stuff if they have music. So we believe that it is fair that the people who are the originators of that music get a very, very tiny part of that enhanced business.

Read on.

Alan Cross

is an internationally known broadcaster, interviewer, writer, consultant, blogger and speaker. In his 40+ years in the music business, Alan has interviewed the biggest names in rock, from David Bowie and U2 to Pearl Jam and the Foo Fighters. He’s also known as a musicologist and documentarian through programs like The Ongoing History of New Music.

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