Canadian Songwriters Propose $10/mo Internet Fee

BitterOak points out this Windsor Star story, according to which "Canadian songwriters are proposing a $10 fee to be added to monthly ISP bills, giving users a license to download music using peer-to-peer file sharing technologies for free, without fear of reprisal. The money collected would be distributed to members of a Canadian association of songwriters (SOCAN). The story doesn't make clear whether the license would apply only to Canadian music, or how musicians in other nations would be compensated otherwise."

Comments

Intl. Distribution

[rueger]

how musicians in other nations would be compensated

SOCAN (and most other country's performing rights organizations) collects foreign royalties for members of ASCAP, BMI etc through reciprocal international agreements.

So in answer, USian composers whose work is played in Canada still get royalties.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[iamhassi]

If this passes I'm so becoming I'm a "musician"....

Re:Intl. Distribution

[jonsmirl]

About 5,000,000 Internet households. $10 month, $120 a year. 95,000 members of SOCAN.
That's $7,000 a year for each member of SOCAN.

I find it more amazing that 1 out 300 people is a SOCAN member. Does Canada really need 95,000 song writers?

Re:Intl. Distribution

[dgatwood]

But on the balance this would likely be good for the unknown performers because it would likely open up a new audience, one which wouldn't likely pay just to sample.

Unlikely. It would probably be distributed in the same way as royalties for audio CD taxes are, which means it's based on radio airplay counts. Translation: unless you're writing music for a major label, you're not going to see a cent.

That's the real reason the big music publishers want bullshit like this. It ensures that artists and songwriters will be forever beholden to the major labels. The songwriter organizations are playing right into the larger players' hands, and are basically defecating on the indie music scene.

For musicians as a whole, this law, if passed, will be a tremendous step backwards. By further institutionalizing the dependence on radio play and other highly restrictive channels, and by effectively reducing the value of sold music in Canada to zero (because you'll be able to legally share and download it for free), the proposed law would make it so that you can't make money with music except by teaching it.

In an era when the rest of the world is embracing the Internet as a great equalizer, Canada's law is threatening to destroy that---to eliminate the usefulness of the Internet as a medium for independent musicians to sell their music and make money outside the context of a major label. Frankly, any law like this is downright criminal.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[commodore6502]

>>>this would likely be good for the unknown performers

Why should I have to pay another $128 (taxes) just to listen to crappy pop music? Frak that. This is nothing more than Government tyranny to subsidize megacorporations (Sony, Warners, et cetera).

Megacorps == Dirty pieces of shit.
Let Sony and the rest of them die.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[commodore6502]

Is they are so "good" at it, how come the Canadian artists had to sue in order to recover nearly 1 billion in unpaid royalties? (Their songs were used on greatest hits CDs, but the sales never credited back to the singers, writers, etc.)

Re:Intl. Distribution

[therealkevinkretz]

"being able to listen to whatever you want without a direct cost"

And that "$10/mo Internet Fee" is better than your avoided "direct cost" how?

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Anonymous Coward]

.

..the proposed law would make it so that you can't make money with music except by teaching it.

You mean musicians will have to make money by passing on the skills they learned for a fee; by selling tickets to live performances; by selling physical, branded merchandise or licensing such sales to third-parties; by selling commissions to write songs for others; by having a patron; etc.

rather than

using government to establish artificial scarcity of a non-scare resource in order to apply old business models to new technology.

Perhaps stepping back to the way musicians previously made money before the recording industry took over might actually be a Good Thing(TM) Perhaps it'll be harder to become a millionaire rock star that way, but the world might be better for it.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[davester666]

There's a couple of problems with the proposal.

1) This is just for songwriters. Performers and/or Labels would need a separate monthly fee on top of this [and significantly higher, because the performance is WAY more important than writing. Think about how much more the labels would want given that they only pay SOCAN 3-5% from the 'sale' of each song.
2) The movie industry is even MORE greedy than the above two groups. They would require an even larger fee than the label's fee.
3) If there were just the SOCAN monthly fee, people would think they are free to download anything and everything [ie, that it covers everything]. That's happening right now in Canada with the music-related taxes on various CD's, DVD's and tapes, which a judge ruled permits users to download music over the internet. However it doesn't cover movies or other things like games.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[pronobozo]

Canada has 28 million users, over 80% of the population(wikipedia). Also, it doesn't get divided amoungst everyone evenly, last time I checked you get "popularity credits" and based on the amount of credits, you get a higher percentage.

Anyways, this is the exact reason why I didn't sign up to SOCAN, I had a gut feeling they'd end up being some type of "voice" for all the songwriters, when really they should just act as the hub for collecting the royalties and getting them to me.

Even if I was signed up to SOCAN, how would they decide how many credits I'd get. From proven downloads? That'd be great cause I've had over 820,000 downloaded. But that wouldn't work because then it'd dilute the big winners, they wouldn't like that. What if my music was for free(because it is)? Would I still get credits?

First the UBB and now this... geesh.

Not all canadian artists are disgruntled and thinking they are "owed" something and feel the need to enforce a tax. With that said, feel free to download my music from my site pronobozo.com, maybe it'll help calm the nerves a little.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[sproketboy]

You forgot selling to elevator companies. :)

Re:Intl. Distribution

[hairyfeet]

The problem is that you can listen to tons of indie artists for free without cutting the *.A.As and their ilk a dime. Most indie artists want you to go to their shows where they'll be happy to sell you a CD, a T-Shirt, a mug, hell with my band we even had keyrings because THAT is where performing musicians make their daily bread. We would even have a "pawnshop special" guitar we would play for a song or two and raffle off, each sale got you another shot at the guitar.

These kinds of "deals" only ensure the Titney Spears and other processed Chezz Whizz of music is kept at the top by their corporate masters, by keeping them getting the biggest piece of the pie. remember folks they FEAR you because they fear loss of control. They made fortunes by fucking artists and being gatekeepers to the masses (and as someone who has actually laid hands on a standard new artist contract I can tell you "ass raping" is too kind a description) and the net takes that control away from them by giving YOU power through indie net stations and word of mouth.

So don't give up what little freedom and power you have to the ever greedy megacorps. They have already committed treasonous bribery upon our elected officials to get truly insane copyright terms foisted upon the world, they fuck the artists over with "Hollywood accounting" every chance they get, they are nothing but blood sucking leeches on the ass of society and the world would be a better place without them. The quicker they die the better, don't give them even more revenue with which to screw you and the artists over.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Rei]

There are lots of ways you can deal with this equitably. The simplest would be to distribute it proportional to their conventional music sales. There are other approaches that could be done, however -- for example, they could create opt-out or opt-in add-ons to be shipped with popular music players that collect statistics about who listens to what, and use that to weigh receipts. I think most listeners would opt-in, wanting the artists they like to be rewarded.

One neat thing that could be done which you can't do with conventional sales is that you could use a non-linear distribution formula -- that is, support small artists to a greater degree than big artists proportional to their audience (something like, "SharesOfRevenue = FansWho'veRecentlyListenedToThem ^ 0.5". To greatly oversimplify, if there were two artists, A and B, and A has 1 million recent fans and B has 10 thousand recent fans, and there's $1m to go around, a linear distribution would say that A gets $999,010, and B gets $9,990. Under the above formula, A gets 1000 shares and B gets 100 shares, meaning A gets $909,090 and B gets $90,909.. Artist A hardly suffers, but artist B can now live on their work.

I've long supported ideas like this, so I really hope it comes into practice. It's a way for new to allow new artists to truly make a living without having to contractually give away the overwhelming majority of what they earn to leaching record labels. Take the labels out of the equation, and it takes a lot total less money to give equal compensation to the artists. Also, it's a way to stop people who actually pay for and compensate artists for their work from having to pick up the slack for those who leach.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[multisync]

If this passes I'm so becoming I'm a "musician"....

I propose we charge everyone a $10.00 fee on their ISP bills for all the free tech support they receive from a relatively small number of geeks. To collect your share of the fee, you'd just have to produce an email from a relative saying they need help "downloading" their camera on to their iPod or something.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[afxgrin]

As if the equitable way to distribute the money is dividing it equally among members. Some musicians are clearly more popular than others, so they would get a larger cut, right? Considering their material is probably 'downloaded' more than others.

This whole thing is ridiculous. $10/customer for SOCAN, what next? $10/customer for the movie industry? $10/customer for graphic artists? $10/customer for the telecom union guys who maintain the network? I still find it appalling that the recording industry managed to push through the fees on mp3 players and CD-R discs. The internet one will NEVER fly.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[EdgeCreeper]

Um, as interesting as that concept is, the grandparent post is absolutely correct. As in creating a law which secures a monopoly for the encumbants while making it so difficult and unfair for anyone else to compete that it effectivly removes them is a downright terrible law. What about the other IP industries, why wouldn't they get in on the act? Would people now have to pay a Movies/TV/Newspaper/Whatever_else levy as well, just to use what is now a pretty essential service, whether they have any interest in those things at all? If that law somehow passes, of course they will try.

You mean musicians will have to make money by passing on the skills they learned for a fee; by selling tickets to live performances; by selling physical, branded merchandise or licensing such sales to third-parties; by selling commissions to write songs for others; by having a patron; etc.

Perhaps stepping back to the way musicians previously made money before the recording industry took over might actually be a Good Thing(TM) Perhaps it'll be harder to become a millionaire rock star that way, but the world might be better for it.

Except that the law only does this to the non-encumbants, while it would makes the encumbants life easier yet again, and it would force people with no interest in downloading music to pay a levy which does not help them at all, even indirectly. The only people who can benefit are the encumbant music companies and some people associated with them, and the heavy downloaders of the music of the said encumbants.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[sodul]

I spend less than $10 a year on music and I do not 'download' it illegally either, why should I pay monthly fine ?

Re:Intl. Distribution

[swordgeek]

Good luck with that.

My brother is a full-time professional musician. He has been on at least seven albums that I can think of, one of which was nominated for a Juno. He has received *exactly* nothing from the tarrif on blank media. Nothing. Nada.
Celine Dione, one of Canada's top-selling artists, made a comment once about how she never saw enough money from the tariffs to make any difference in her income.

This will be the same, if it goes through. A cash-grab by the industry that goes to middle-managers, never artists.

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Cerium]

Plastic? Physical media? People still buy music on physical media? :D

Seriously though, If I'm understanding this correctly, this fee/tax/whatever would replace the whole payment system for online music purchases. Yes, I suppose if you bought physical media, you'd be paying twice... but at least you're getting something tangible out of it.

For your other two scenarios:
You could always opt out and not pay the fee. Granted, the article seems to imply that it would be a painful process; but if you're looking to save that $10/mo, it seems to be a proposed option.

And if you have a home-business or two houses with two broadband internet connections, I'm pretty certain $10/mo is not really going to be a major concern. Maybe in principal, but, to be completely honest, if you were to complain to me about having to pay $10/mo more than I do for unlimited music because you have two houses, I would, most certainly, want to kick you right in the balls (or whichever applies here).

Re:Intl. Distribution

[Ihmhi]

There are lots of ways you can deal with this equitably.

That's the problem right there. The **AAs are all about keeping things as inequitable as possible.

Hmmmmm......

[Donniedarkness]

Hmmm.......

No.

Re:Hmmmmm......

[iamhassi]

I have no problem either, we should all pay for our music on iTunes and then pay an extra $10/mo to... wait, I already paid, why am I paying again?

But I don't think it should stop with music! What about that copy of Office you downloaded? We should all pay $XX/mo to the BSA (Business Software Alliance... not boy scouts) for downloading programs.... also remember the MPAA needs their $XX for the movies.... and the Entertainment Software Association needs their $XX for those games you download.... am I leaving anyone out? Music, software, movies, games... PORN! We owe the Adult Film and Video Association of America a TON! $XXX/mo sound alright? Ok so your monthly internet bill is $1,800, we offer a convenient payment plan of only $20 charged three times a day...

Re:Hmmmmm......

[LordNimon]

The $10 is not to cover bandwidth. It's to cover the cost of the music that you're downloading. They're saying that people would normally spend $10/month buying music if it weren't possible to "pirate" it.

Re:Hmmmmm......

[houghi]

Newsflash: The money is NOT going to the artists.

Re:Hmmmmm......

[commodore6502]

Frak that.

It's about time the writers, artists, etc become hourly employees just like all the rest of us (engineers, programmers, printers, tech document creators, ...). Pay them $30/hour for their work and done. No more free ride beyond that, no 200 year long cashcow that supports their great-great-great grandsperm.

I'm sick of these creative types thinking they are better than ME and the job I do.

Re:Hmmmmm......

[MichaelSmith]

I don't download music but I do download free porn so I suppose it would make sense for some money to go from me to subsidise the pornographers don't support.

Re:Hmmmmm......

[houghi]

Please also seed after you download, but most likely THAT will still be illegal and that is who they will still go after and sue.

So this is what will happen:
1) 10$ per month is extra you pay
2) All up loaders will be prosecuted as that is still illegal
3) Only pay sites like iTunes will offer it for money
4) Profit (X2)

Re:Hmmmmm......

[bill_mcgonigle]

If the plan was opt-in, it would almost make sense.

That's called Rhapsody, right?

Re:Hmmmmm......

[Totenglocke]

Except for the people who have no desire to download music and just get stuck paying $120 a year to subsidize everyone else.

No.

[Sarten-X]

As someone who simply doesn't listen to music, pirated or otherwise, I'm going to go with "no way in Hell".

Re:No.

[ToadProphet]

It appears to be opt-in. So if you don't want to have a 'license to download', you don't pay.

It doesn't seem like a terrible idea, though I'd need to see a few more details.

Re:No.

[Baron_Yam]

I'm in a similar boat - I listen to the radio if one of my coworkers puts it on, otherwise I very rarely listen to my 70s and 80s stuff that I probably purchased more than 20 years ago (though have since digitized, of course).

Basically, fuck them. With rusty barbed wire. Rectally.

Re:No.

[sharkey]

Rampant copyright law hurts everyone...

FTFY

Re:No.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'd be very careful to see how it treats "uploading". Unless it very specifically protects that as well, it essentially changes nothing for any user of common p2p setups. If it doesn't do that, it is basically a scam, because the right to download without legal threat is rather useless if nobody has the right to upload without legal threat. Everybody already has the right to purchase downloads from entities that have licensed the music in question, so paying more for that is absurd, and a p2p setup that consists entirely of leeches isn't all that useful.

Re:No.

[dryeo]

The Canadian courts have handled the making available argument the opposite of the States. As I understand it, if I have a FTP server with a bunch of music on it and you download from it, it's your action and legal. If I upload to your FTP server then I'm distributing and it's illegal.
So all the people who want to share is make available their collection and as long as the downloader initiates the download it is legal.

We already pay a royalty on CDs for this.

[tomhudson]

They negotiated a levy on all blank CDs long ago, for this same reason.

This is double-dipping.

Better idea - why not make it a levy on iPods and other music players. Why should I have to pay a royalty when I don't download music?

Re:We already pay a royalty on CDs for this.

[tomhudson]

Been years since I bought a blank CD or DVD. I have about 30 DVDs left. At current burn rate this will last me a couple of years. Unless this is really atypical behaviour, they're not getting a lot of money from blank discs.

Which is why they want to get a constant stream of revenue from your internet connection. It's even better than selling you a CD, since they get a constant revenue stream, with no production cost to them.

Deaf people think what of this idea?

[vik]

Seriously. There are a lot of deaf people and they won't take kindly to pre-paying for something they can't possibly use.

Vik :v)

Re:Deaf people think what of this idea?

[betterunixthanunix]

Funny, because blind people still pay taxes that are used to construct highways, at least as far as I know. People without children still pay taxes that are used to support public schools. So what exactly is wrong with deaf people paying a tax that supports the creation of music (in theory, anyway)?

My issue with this tax is that it is probably not going to result in an end to the recording industry lawsuits. That is the real problem here: they want taxpayer support, while retaining the ability to attack taxpayers who dare to download music.

Re:Deaf people think what of this idea?

[gman003]

But blind people still benefit from highways (even though they don't drive, they still ride), and people without children benefit from educational taxes (because, seriously, would you want to put up with someone else's uneducated brat?). The only people this tax would benefit is the RIAA (or whatever the Canadian equivalent is).

10 bucks a month?

[the_Bionic_lemming]

So they would want me to add over 25% of cost to my monthly bill in order to download songs - which I wouldn't and don't?

I have a better idea. for that ten bucks a month I can download any song, movie, or game I want. No media protection, no online DRM, and no exceptions. Iron Man 3 would be available for me to grab and watch for free the day it's released.

Otherwise - Get bent.

Allocation?

[Tablizer]

How does it tell good musicians from bad musicians? If I spray my crotch silver and put furniture in my hair while playing toilet rolls and call myself a "musician", what keeps me from getting the same amount as Lady Gaga?......oh, wait

SOCAN can go fuck itself.

[drunkennewfiemidget]

It's already responsible for all sorts of idiotic laws and levies in Canada that shouldn't exist. It's idiotic.

If you have a wedding at a public venue you rent, you will be charged the 'SOCAN' fee.

Even if you don't play any music.

Even if you have a band playing music that will only play their own songs and they aren't a member of SOCAN.

So I say again,

SOCAN can DIAF.

(I also remember reading a story some time ago about the idiotic SOCAN levy on blank media not actually being paid to any actual musicians.)

However, it's become more and more apparent with every passing day that the CRTC isn't interested in consumers'/citizens' rights, so I'm sure this will go through, and we'll continue to be fucked by Canadian coporations.

Existing levy on blank CDs

[click170]

Sure, we can talk about adding a 10$ fee to internet bills, but only *after* you rescind the levy on blank media.
Canadians already pay a levy on blank CDs for the expressed purpose of compensating artists.

Bridge toll.

[unity100]

Why not cut to the chase and just toll everyone passing any bridge, junction, road crossing, waterway and then divert the loot to the "intellectual property 'rights' holders" ?

because that is, entirely this.

It's not so abstract...

[Thraxy]

I live in Denmark, and I pay a TV license because I own a computer. Around $400 a year.

Apparently, since the TV network is a "public service", they can charge me, because MAYBE I might go on their website and look at their stream, which isn't even HD. Greed in high places always manages to fuck everyone over in the end... I guess that's the lesson learned.

If I had those $400 extra a year, maybe I could afford a TV set.

I can't stop laughing

[fish waffle]

It's not unlike the monthly license paid by commercial entities to Muzak

Yes, and it represents a similar level of quality. Really, you think a sanctioned 33% tax (and absolutely certain to grow!) on your internet access is worth supporting and even further entrenching all that auto-tune crap coming from the major labels and clear-channel radio stations?

Re:Counter proposal

[thrillseeker]

Throw Canadian songwriters into a deep pit filled with raw sewage, punji sticks, and starving dingoes.

Dear Mr. Coward,

Unlike many harebrained ideas we receive here at Fox, your proposal for a new reality show intrigues us. Please wait by the phone for a call ...

Make it Opt In

[Rinnon]

Shooting this down without having a discussion about it is terribly short sighted. We keep complaining that the RIAA and co need to think of better business models. Maybe this is it. I am not opposed to paying 10 dollars a month to download as much music as I want. I am however opposed to it being tacked onto my Internet bill against my will. So why not make this an Opt In option? People who don't download music don't need to Opt In. I could Opt In and download whatever I want without fear of legal reprisal. I don't think that's such a terrible deal. Next it'll be Hollywood wanting it's 10 bucks a month, or Book Publishers. Again, I'd be happy to pay 10 bucks a month to be able to legally download all the movies or books I want to. As long as it's my choice, I think that's a really reasonable price to pay. Having the Internet cost 100 bucks a month because of Entertainment Taxes when all you want is Wikipedia is ridiculous. Being given the OPTION to pay 100 bucks a month with all that Entertainment legally included is actually fairly reasonable.

They've got the wrong idea

[ascii_(!!!!)_comb]

So this organization's idea is: they perceive that they are being robbed, hence to rectify the situation, they are going to rob the masses by force. Second, they're not going to provide any downloading services at all despite taking money from people. These people suck at business and morals.

Really This will never happen. Some reasons being:

[levi989]

My reasons for it not working or even being fair. 1) Not everyone listens to music. 2) Out of those that do, not all download it illegally. 3) $10 is a ridiculous amount ON TOP of the internet bill... 4) Could certainly get it cheaper elsewhere. 5) Greedy pigs would probably keep if for them-selfs and not give it to the artists(look at the history of this music business, people). I think that clearly demonstrated why this is a ridiculously thing to try and do. Thanks for reading my comment!

I know you might think this odd

[Shivetya]

but an old friend of mine is deaf and he listens to music, well he feels music. As such most of what he plays in his car is bass heavy but he does get enjoyment out of it. Now sometimes this leads to some hilarious choices in what he plays.