Copyright Board of Canada approves SOCAN’s radio tariff

The Copyright Board of Canada has approved SOCAN’s commercial radio tariff for the years 2008-10, resulting in some good news for SOCAN members.

While the Board did not approve the increases sought by SOCAN, it did approve SOCAN's request to return to a rate based on gross income, rather than advertising revenues, which had been the basis for the 2003-07 tariff. The basis for this tariff had been “gross revenue” for decades. This change merely confirms the Board’s understanding when it changed the rate base in the 2005 decision that both definitions represented the same rate base, and that “it was not the Board’s objective then to reduce royalties to be collected by the collectives.”

The Board maintained SOCAN's rates at 1.5 percent of gross income for low music usage stations and 3.2 percent and 4.4 percent for other music usage stations.

The Board also approved a reporting term that, where available, would require those stations that have sequential performance data (a complete listing of the musical works broadcast, also known as “census” measurement) to produce that information, thus facilitating SOCAN's distribution efforts.

Other tariffs were also approved by the Board in this decision that apply to other collectives, being Re:Sound (formerly the Neighouring Rights Collective of Canada), AVLA/SOPROQ (the Audio-Video Licensing Agency and the Société de gestion collective des droits des producteurs de phonogrammes et de vidéogrammes du Québec), ArtistI, and CSI (CMRRA/SODRAC Inc.).