p2pnet news view | P2P | Music:- If you’re going to be in Ottawa on May 29, and you’re looking for good music at a more than reasonable price, you might want to head over to Cafe Dekcuf on Rideau Street.

The fact you’ll also be helping out a victim of the corporate music industry’s SOCAN might be an added inducement.

To digress briefly, I recently heard from my friend Wenda Atkin over at CanadaJams that SOCAN is up to its old tricks.

SOCAN ‘investigators’ spend much of their time lurking around school cafeterias, dentist surgeries and hair-dressing salons looking for trouble, I said in February.

It’s a corporate music industry organ, the initials standing for Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada and it figures any time anyone, anywhere, anyhow, plays a tune owned by one of its members, someone, somewhere, owes it money.

p2pnet has, “reported on this a number of times, sometimes including spoofs of the SOCAN logo, which prompted organisation lawyers to try to intimidate p2pnet into removing the graphics on the grounds they’re trade mark infringements,” I said, noting, “Clearly, what with this kind of thing preoccupying it, and chasing down errant hairdressers and dentists, SOCAN is doing an excellent job for its members.”

The quotes came in a story quoting Mark Goldberg as stating SOCAN wanted the CRTC (Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission) to impose regulatory constraints on Canadian hosted websites.

Now, “As you can see if you move your eyes just a little to the right, there’s now a ‘Donate’ button right at the top of the page,” says Matthew at i (heart) music, going 0n »»»

It’s not something I want to be putting up there, and I’m not even sure it’ll be much help, but unfortunately, due to recent events, I have little choice.

Here’s the problem: yesterday I was contacted by SOCAN, the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada. It turns out that anytime a concert happens in which at least one member of any of the bands is also a member of SOCAN, the person promoting the show is legally required to pay fees to the Society to cover copyright royalties associated with the live performance of SOCAN-member songs. It doesn’t matter if the band in question has already been paid directly for their performance, under Canadian copyright law SOCAN is legally entitled to either 3% of the door or $35, whichever is greater.

This isn’t something I’d ever done, since I was once told, years ago, that if a show doesn’t make any profit, then it doesn’t matter. (Evidently the person who told me that didn’t know the difference between “gross” and “net”.) And, operating under that principle — coupled with a firm belief that since no one’s at a show to see me, I don’t really deserve a cut of the door — I’ve always made an effort to pay out any money received at the door to the bands who actually performed and got people out. In cases where there wasn’t enough from the door to cover those costs, I’ve dipped into my own pocket to pay — after all, as I said, concert-goers are there to see the band, not whoever organized it, so there’s really not much reason for me to benefit financially from the hard work of the musicians on stage.Because of this, of the approximately 70 shows I’ve promoted over the last three years, there’s only a handful from which I can say I actually made any kind of money.

Obviously, that’s no defence. Being ignorant of a law doesn’t make that law any less valid, and, as such, whatever the total comes to I’ll pay, whether I can afford it or not.

Unfortunately, given that the royalty fees are going to be somewhere in the neighbourhood of $2,000, this is something that falls a whole lot closer to “not afford”. It’s a lot amount of money, particularly when you factor in finances that are already stretched thin by a wedding that’s less than three months away.

That post was on May 16, and, “I’ve been absolutely blown away by the kindness and generosity of friends, acquaintances and strangers from — literally — around the world, whether it’s been a donation to help me pay my debt to SOCAN, offers from bands interested in contributing songs and/or performances, or simply a kind word of support,” says i(heart) in a weekend update, continuing »»»

I’m extremely grateful to everyone who’s helped out, and all the people whose name appears to the right will be rewarded for their generosity in the form a compilation album that I’m in the process of putting together. It’s going to feature new, rare and unreleased tracks donated by the likes of Bonjour Brumaire, The Burning Hell, Amos the Transparent, These Electric Lives, Black Hat Brigade and a whole bunch of other great artists (including some other big names who are just in the process of figuring out what songs they can provide), and it’s my way of saying thank you in a non-email way.

As for the whole SOCAN issue itself … I had a meeting with a SOCAN representative a few days ago, where they explained to me the details surrounding why I suddenly found myself stuck with an enormous bill for royalties owed to the Society. It started because one band submitted a request for compensation for their performance at an i(heart)music show. This led to SOCAN becoming aware of my existence, which in turn led to them investigating and researching as many of my shows as they could, which in turn led to my notification last Friday.

I also learned a few things from the meeting. For example, just because you’re ignorant of the existence of certain sections of the Copyright Act related to concerts, it doesn’t mean that they don’t apply to you (though once they contacted me, I had some idea that “I didn’t know!” probably wouldn’t be a very strong defense). Similarly, just because you lose money on a show, it doesn’t mean that SOCAN doesn’t want royalties from it (hence why the Copyright Act looks at gross revenues from a show, rather than net revenues).

More importantly, I learned that even though venues do pay royalty fees for all recorded music played in their clubs, it’s left to their discretion whether they want to cover fees for shows organized by outside promoters. In the cases of most Ottawa venues, apparently, it’s their policy to not cover those shows, thereby leaving me with the responsibility of remitting SOCAN payments for the shows for which I was responsible (though this seems like one of those policies that it would have been nice to have had communicated to me). So, to all the concert promoters who contacted me in the wake of this mess, I’d urge you to contact the venues you’ve worked at, to find out whether you’ve been covered for your shows.

I also learned that, contrary to what a lot of people have told me in the last week, just because a show costs less than $6, it doesn’t mean that it’s exempt from SOCAN. It only means that SOCAN doesn’t have to reimburse artists for those shows. I’m going to repeat that, since everyone I’ve told that to has responded with a stunned silence: SOCAN is legally entitled to royalty payments for every show in which either one member of a band is a member of SOCAN(or one of the songs performed was written by a SOCAN member), regardless of the show’s price. If a show is greater than $6, then the SOCAN-member bands are allowed to apply to be reimbursed for performance royalties (starting at $75 per show). If, however, the show is $6 or less, than SOCAN gets to keep the money. I’m still trying to wrap my head around the logic of that, but, apparently, it is the law. So that defence didn’t work either.

So, where does this leave me? Better off than it initially appeared, actually. Thanks to the fact I met with SOCAN immediately and was willing to work with them (according to the representative, apparently not many people ask as many questions as I did, but I suspect he was just saying that to butter me up), they were nice enough to waive the 2006 and 2007 parts of my bill. I still owe a percentage of gross door revenues for 2008, plus I need to pay a fairly sizeable fee for shows for the rest of 2009, plus, because of the nature of the settlement I’ve basically agreed to keep on doing shows through 2010, but on the whole, it’s going to be about $1,000 less than I had first anticipated. I still owe a lot of money (at least by my standards), but thanks to the donations of some of the kindest readers/bands/publicists/bloggers in the world, it’s something I’ll be able to afford. I’m within shouting distance of the total, which is why —-

—- “I’m going to leave that ‘Donate’ button up on the side for one or two more days, in case anyone else is would be willing to spare a few dollars to help out someone in their time of need (and again, anyone who does will receive a link to the compilation album),” i(heart) adds.

It’ll be a few favourite Ottawa bands, “all of whom came forward and offered to play a show to help me pay off SOCAN,” says i(heart, adding:

“The bands, as you can see on the poster, are Centretown Cripplers, Sunjet, Blazer (download “That’s Our Sound“) and The John Punch Band. The cost is only $6 at the door, which seems pretty fair for such a stacked line-up. Doors are at 8, and, as is almost always the case, it’s 19+. I can guarantee it’ll be a good show, so if you’re in Ottawa on Friday, I hope to see you there!”

I’m on Vancouver Island, damnit, but if you’re in Ottawa …

Click here for more on the bands.

And stay tuned.

Jon Newton – p2pnet

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May, 2009