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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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...

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.