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.
We already pay the performers. Why do we have to pay SOCAN?
When you hire a band or a DJ, you’re paying for their services as performing artists, but not for the public performance of the music, that is, for the people who created the music being performed. Performing music and creating music are two separate types of creative work, and each deserves fair compensation, even in cases where the performers are also the creators of the works.
TV series lovers in Québec, and all over the world, have gobbled up BBC America’s Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, Série noire (SRC), and the British series National Treasure and Utopia – all of which were brilliantly scored by SOCAN member Cristobal Tapia de Veer. He’s a singular composer who doesn’t play by the rules, and the first screen composer to ever win the SOCAN International Award during the 2017 Gala in Montréal. He’s also won three other international awards for his work: the FIPA d’Or and BAFTA Award for Best Original Score for National Treasure, and the Best Original Score Award at the Festival de Film Gérardmer, in France, for The Girl with all the Gifts. His phone has rung off the hook since then.