New copyright fees could impact karaoke, weddings

[GAP]

New copyright fees could impact karaoke, weddings
By QMI Agency
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Get ready to pay more if you want to hear your favourite tunes at public events.

The Copyright Board of Canada announced on May 25 fees will now be charged when people use recorded music as part of a public event, including weddings, parades, circuses and karaoke.

"Authors of this music have been paid royalties for decades; performers and makers of sound recordings have yet to receive any compensation in this respect," the board notes in its reasoning to introduce the new fees.

These are different from SOCAN (Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada) fees, which pay songwriters and publishers of music.

The new Re:Sound fee will compensate the people who perform the music -- which in many cases would be the same people who wrote and/or published the music.

The board specifically named assemblies, fashion shows, conventions, receptions (including weddings) and video game events as falling under public events that will have to pay up.


The cost for a reception is $9.25 for up to 100 people so long as they're not dancing. Add a little Electric Boogaloo and that cost rises to $18.51. The more people, the more you pay, with a cap of $78.66 for more than 500 people.

For bars that have karaoke up to three nights a week the fee will be $86.06 annually. If patrons are belting out bad renditions of old favourites more than three nights a week, the fee rises to $124.

When it comes to festivals, fairs and exhibitions, there are set fees for up to 75,000 attendees that top out at $42.05. But when there are more than 75,000, the fee becomes 54 cents for the first 100,000 people, 24 cents for the next 100,000 people, 18 cents for the next 300,000, then 13 cents for every person over 500,000.

For parade floats, it's $4.39 for each float playing recorded music, with a minimum fee of $32.55.

Organizers of events and owners of bars are expected to voluntarily report the music they play to the Copyright Board of Canada.
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[mj_lover]

so you buy the music...then pay to play it if others can hear?
sounds about right

 

[Brasidas]

so you buy the music...then pay to play it if others can hear?
sounds about right

We've got a popular band coming to play at our wedding; over and above what we're paying them to come play music that only they composed, performed and recorded, we're obliged to pay a fee to SOCAN. My fiance was familiar with the practice, but it blows my mind.

 

[bridges]

Parade floats?  Seriously?

On the other hand, I'd like to go back in time and levy some fees on a certain ice-cream truck operator in north Edmonton who used to drive around torturing us for hours on end, with the same electronic tune written/programmed by person(s) unknown.  My house must have been in the center of his area because I could hear him no matter where he went, all day, every weekend.
k:

 

[57Chevy]

Simple solution, turn on the radio instead.
BTW, I'm never buying pre-recorded music of any sort ever again. ;D

 

[GAP]

Supreme Court scraps some copyright fees on downloads
Josh O’Kane The Globe and Mail  Thursday, Jul. 12 2012
Article Link

The Supreme Court of Canada on Thursday rejected the collection of some copyright fees for music downloaded over the Internet.

It was one of five rulings handed down relating to copyright, several of which added new distinctions to the way the music industry monetizes content online.

A group of the country's largest Internet service providers had – among them Rogers, Bell and Telus – appealed to the Supreme Court over performance tariffs  applied to proprietary music download services they offered to wireless customers.

Before the ruling, both downloaded and streamed music were considered a “public” communication, and any services that provided music was required to pay a fee to license the “performance” of the song.

But the high court rejected the idea downloads constitute a public communication, calling a download a private transmission and relieving the ISP services and others such as Apple’s iTunes Store from having to pay the performance levy.

However, the court ruled services that stream music online in Canada – such as through CBC’s web site, digital commercial stations and customizable websites like Rdio and Slacker – must continue to pay the performance fees as such behaviour is “not a private transaction outside the scope of the right to communicate to the public.”

The difference between download and stream is significant because the latter is an increasingly popular way for consumers to listen to music, accessing tens of millions of songs in this manner.
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