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.

What is a SOCAN license?

A SOCAN license gives your business or organization, the freedom and flexibility to use virtually any music you want – legally, ethically, and easily. Without SOCAN, you would have to get permission and negotiate a royalty with every songwriter, lyricist, and music publisher whose work you intend to play, or to have publicly performed. Instead, SOCAN simplifies the process by allowing businesses to pay a relatively small fee, often once a year to play all the music their customers enjoy hearing. These fees are then distributed as royalties to music creators in Canada and around the world, through reciprocal agreements with similar music rights organizations in other countries. To learn more about our Licensed To Play program, visit our Music Users page.

Dean Brody

Dean Brody has earned 13 Canadian Country Music Association (CCMA) Awards, four SOCAN Awards for his songwriting, and two JUNOs, and he’s played on the JUNO Awards broadcast, too. His massive country radio hit “Bring Down the House” won Brody 2016 CCMA honours in the Single, Video, Songwriting and Top Selling Single categories. The longtime SOCAN member likes to tell cinematic stories that resonate both emotionally and musically, creating vivid real-life characters. Unlike lots of country music, which is co-written with professional songwriters, Brody writes alone.