Live Music Venues

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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.

Stephan Moccio

SOCAN member Stephan Moccio co-writes global hit songs. He co-wrote Céline Dion’s “A New Day Has Come,” which topped the Hot AC charts for 21 weeks; “I Believe,” the official theme of the 2010 Olympic Winter Games; Miley Cyrus’ “Wrecking Ball,” which has sold more than 5 million copies in the U.S. alone, and has gone gold, platinum, or multi-platinum in 14 countries worldwide; and The Weeknd’s “Earned It” – the end credit song for Fifty Shades of Grey – which earned an Oscar nomination, a Grammy win, and went platinum or multi-platinum in a dozen countries. Moccio is currently composing movie soundtracks in the upper echelons of Hollywood.