Live Music Venues

> Who Socan Works With > Music Users > Live Music Venues

Live music venues offer music fans a space to enjoy unique, real-time musical performances – concert experiences only made possible by songwriters and composers who create the music that those musicians perform. When you become Licensed To Play with SOCAN, you have the freedom to engage all the live music your business needs to be successful, while ensuring that the artists you hire to perform are compensated for their work as songwriters as well. Your license to play music demonstrates to artists, songwriters, music fans and peer businesses that your venue is using music legally and ethically, while supporting Canadian music creators. The license fees that live venues pay to SOCAN for the public performance of live music are used to compensate SOCAN-member songwriters, composers and music publishers that make up SOCAN.

If I don't use Canadian-made music, do I still have to get a SOCAN license?

Yes. A SOCAN license gives you permission to use copyright-protected musical works of SOCAN members as well as members of affiliated international performing rights societies from around the world. Through agreements with international performing rights organizations, SOCAN issues licenses for virtually all music used in public by businesses in Canada. SOCAN then transfers the corresponding monies to the appropriate society, and vice versa.

deadmau5

deadmau5 (a.k.a. Joel Zimmerman) made the cover of Rolling Stone in 2012, and is the most recognized figure in electronic dance music – both for his mix of progressive house, techno, trance and repetitive beats, and for creating his memorable giant mouse head. The first Canadian musician to headline and fill Toronto’s cavernous Rogers Centre (capacity 54,000), the SOCAN member rocketed to the top of his game in an impressively short amount of time. deadmau5 has earned a SOCAN International Achievement Award, three JUNOs, five Beatport Awards, four electronic music DJ Awards, three International Dance Music Awards, and six Grammy nominations.