CM: Aside from Facebook and Instagram,
what other platforms are currently
licensed?
Brown: We’re in talks with the major promoters.
So, I think that this story isn’t going
to be over yet. I think that a lot of big promoters
are going to have their own platforms.
We are in talks with other providers,
like Side Door, where they’re selling tickets
[for livestreams].
What we’re saying to our members is,
‘Send in the setlists [regardless of the platform].
Send it, tell us where you’re playing,
and that is helpful to us.’ We’re probably
already in the licensing conversations with
these guys, but then once the licence fees
do come in, we’ve already got your setlists
and we can pay it out.
CM: So, an artist performs a 45-minute
show on Facebook, say. What do they
have to do to get paid?
Brown: Send us your setlists [through the
SOCAN online member portal], show us it’s
been on Facebook. We had to define what
a livestream concert would be, so with
Encore!, it has to hit 100 views and either
10 songs or 30 minutes, but we’re listening
to our members as well.
So, the Cameron House’s front room
wouldn’t be 100 people, but you would’ve
got paid for that concert in the traditional
concert world. So, we’re listening to find
out how many views they’re typically getting,
how often they are typically doing
these livestreams, and then we can play
with how that criteria can shift to make
sure it’s a meaningful distribution for
people and that it’s not leaving people out,
and make sure that these royalties are accessible.
Because if this is where live music
is going, then we want to make sure that
these royalties stay an important part of
these writers’ overall earnings.
CM: The money to pay out typical live
performance royalties comes from the
yearly licensing fees paid to SOCAN
through Entandem for the right to host
live music. So, outside of the one-year
Encore! program, where does that
money come from and how is it determined
how much is paid for a show?
Brown: It would come from the licence
fees specific to that platform or specific to
that concert series. So, let’s use Facebook
for example. We’ve taken the royalties paid
by Facebook, which also pays us for the
recorded music piece, and we’ve apportioned
about $200,000 per quarter to pay
SOCAN INTERIM-CEO JENN BROWN
out for livestreams. So, what we’re looking
at is about $150 going out per concert.
We thought that this could be a
meaningful amount for a concert, because
if you looked at a lot of the shows
played around town or in any city just
doing a gig for a regular concert, that
could be about a $75 distribution. But
the problem is you’re not going from
Toronto to Hamilton to Windsor; you’re
probably playing right now to people in
Toronto, Hamilton, and Windsor and half
of Canada. So, how do you apportion
that? Those are the parts we’re going to
have to keep looking at.
For other shows, like a Live Nation
concert, that’s really the percentage of
the licence fees that goes straight to the
writers and publishers for all the songs
that were performed. So, that is a real
direct one-to-one distribution. In the
livestreaming world, I think it’s going to
be more like what the streaming world
looks like right now on Spotify. You get
a pooled amount of money and that
money needs to be apportioned out for
all the uses within that quarter. So, I think
it is a bit different going forward.
CM: When you were negotiating the
licensing agreements for Facebook
and Instagram in 2018, were the
livestream components much of a
negotiation point?
Brown: No, it wasn’t much of a negotiation
point; it would’ve been an add-on
just because Facebook and these social
media platforms have so many different
types of uses. It could be a real, professional
music video, it could be commercial
content where they actually have a
movie on there, and it can also be useruploaded
content, like you upload a video
of yourself dancing to your favourite
song. So, there’s so many different types
of uses within these agreements that it
becomes much more of an overarching
agreement for music use. Though with
livestreams, I don’t think even Facebook
saw that this was going to be something
in their future.
I’d say the one benefit of agreements
is that they’re often short-term and we
get to see how these things evolve and
I can imagine that livestreams are going
to be a much bigger part of the conversation
in the upcoming negotiations.
CM: YouTube Live is another popular
platform right now. Does your Google/
YouTube agreement cover that?
Brown: We do have a licence with You-
Tube. They have so many different pieces
of their licence that I would assume that’s
covered, but I don’t know for certain. I can
imagine that the licensing team is all over
that. But again, if you have a concert on
YouTube, send in that setlist.
CM: In a real-world concert, artists
can play cover songs and the
corresponding portion of SOCAN
royalties goes to the writers/publishers
of those songs. Do they have
the same freedom to play covers
in livestreamed concerts, or does
the technology use make the rights
equation more complicated?
Brown: On the performing rights side,
absolutely [they can play covers]. That’s
the beauty of a blanket performing
rights licence. Right now, if you are just
streaming and it’s just your Facebook
show, go ahead. Where I think it’s going
to be more complicated is as these
things become more commercial and
they get repurposed for different uses
and are saved on different platforms,
then the reproduction rights could absolutely
come into play, as well as a sync
licence. Definitely for the more commercial
uses, as we see the big promoters
going to City TV, for example. Anybody
playing on that, you can be pretty sure
you’re going to need a sync licence before
you start playing that song.
Michael Raine is the Senior Editor of
Canadian Musician.
CANADIAN MUSICIAN 11