Some clubs, bars, could go silent in Canada
p2pnet news view Music:- SOCAN is short for Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada, and its doughty `investigators` scour school cafeterias, dentist surgeries, hair-dressing salons, and so on, searching for transgressions of the Corporate Music Code of Conduct under which every time someone plays a tune somewhere, money is owed.
But it isn’t alone. There’s another Big Music vampire —-
—- The Neighbouring Rights Collective of Canada.
Whoa!
Yup. No lie.
And one of its directors is Graham Henderson, the public mouthpiece of Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music’s CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association of America).
Now, the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association says if the above-mentioned ‘collective’ has its way, some restaurants, bars and clubs could go silent.
The ‘rights’ outfit wants to hike royalty fees, but an increase in “the fee to play music for customers would force many business owners to reconsider whether it’s worth the cost,” says the restaurant group, quoted by the Canadian Press.
“The association estimates many of its members would face a $6,000 annual increase for playing background music, which would give some businesses a $30,000 bill,” says the story, adding:
“The Neighbouring Rights Collective of Canada wants the royalty fee to increase by more than 3.5 times over the current rate, to properly compensate performers and engineers.”
(Cheers, Marc)
hair-dressing salons -SOCAN threatens p2pnet. Again, August 2, 2007
Canadian Press – July 21, 2009
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July 22nd, 2009 at 9:37 am
There goes karaoke night!
.
.
in some cases that’s a blessing
July 22nd, 2009 at 9:40 am
hehehe, did you know Karaoke is a japanese slang term for tone deaf?
fyi…
July 22nd, 2009 at 11:19 am
They won’t go silent, they will find other places are doing what they should be doing: supporting non-SOCAN-like musicians. There ARE musicians whom are NOT members of those organizations and they could benefit from having their music played, maybe even compensation, at restaurants and the like.
July 22nd, 2009 at 3:39 pm
I have to wonder why they haven’t specifically targetted karaoke itself.
After all, every song is “being performed” and “in a public venue”.
July 22nd, 2009 at 3:40 pm
“…did you know Karaoke is a japanese slang term for tone deaf?”
No, but if you hum a few bars…..
July 22nd, 2009 at 3:57 pm
@DA,
the Karaoke thing seems to ring a bell with me going back a couple of years.
Are you sure they haven’t targeted it yet?
Maybe it was the states…
hmm
July 22nd, 2009 at 8:17 pm
@M2:
As far as I know, the only thing that happened (and it may be what you were thinking about), was that a few of the manufacturers of karaoke discs (SoundChoice and Legend, I believe) were getting DJs “busted” for having “bootleg copies” of their tracks.
They were actually sending “scouts” to all the bars, watching for DJs putting in discs that weren’t genuine (something that you can tell from across the room – the real ones are shiny silver on the reverse). Once spotted, they called in the Cavalry. The fines were exhorbitant, and even the DJs’ equipment was confiscated in most cases.
This happened a few years ago, and I believe it was mostly confined to the US, but there were a few caught by the “sting” up here in Canada as well. One guy I knew was fined $250,000 CDN, and had all this beautiful equipment taken, and he was actually packing all the originals!! (He just played the copies to save the originals – which went for $70 each.) He had to jump through quite a few hoops to get his stuff back.
Just another demonstration of out-of-control IP insanity.
July 28th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
This article makes a good case for both sides: http://tinyurl.com/nhxu9m