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.
What is a performing right?
A performing right is the right to perform musical works in public or communicate them to the public by telecommunication. SOCAN members have assigned this right to SOCAN to administer (i.e., license and distribute royalties) and enforce on their behalf. Tariffs for performing rights are set by the Copyright Board of Canada.
In 2016, then-19-year-old Alessia Cara won the SOCAN Breakout Award, and a SOCAN Pop/Rock Award for her worldwide smash hit single “Here.” In 2016 and 2017, the young SOCAN member earned eight JUNO Awards nominations and two wins, and joined Taylor Swift onstage to sing the song. “Here” has amassed platinum sales in Canada and double-platinum sales in the United States, where it cracked the Billboard Top Five, and charted worldwide. It's also logged a whopping 125 million YouTube views to date. Her debut album Know-It-All earned rave reviews from the likes of Billboard, NME, and the New York Times. She’s also been featured as a mentor on CTV’s music series The Launch in 2018.