Publishers/Composers; “Ta-Da ‘We’re in the Money’”

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The Copyright Board of Canada has finally issued the second part of its Tariff 22 decision on Oct. 24, 2008 dealing with communications to the public by telecommunications of musical works over the Internet.

The first part of this tariff was published on Oct. 18, 2007 and dealt exclusively with online music services.

The new decision, retroactive to Jan. 1, 1996 (much cheering here by music publishers and songwriters) deals with all other uses of music on the Internet, namely Internet radio and television, other audio sites and game sites.

For radio stations that already pay royalties to the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) for their conventional activities, the same rates are certified for their Internet activities—1.5% if low use; 4.2% otherwise.

For commercial, pay and specialty television, pay audio services and satellite radio services, the rates are the same as what these users already pay or will be paying SOCAN—1.9% for television and 12.35% for pay audio services (the rate for satellite radio has yet to be set).

CBC, TV Ontario and Tele-Quebec will pay a proportion of 10% of the amounts they already pay to SOCAN.

Websites that play music but do not have a conventional counterpart will pay a rate based on the music they use—1.5% with music use of 20% or less; 4.2% for over 20% music use but less than 80%; and 5.3% if music is 80% or more.

Finally, the starting rate for game sites that use music will be 0.8%

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Larry LeBlanc has been a leading figure in Canadian music for four decades.

He has been a regular music commentator on CTV’s “Canada A.M” for 35 years, and has been featured on numerous CBC-TV, CTV, YTV, Bravo! MuchMusic, MusiMax, and Newsworld programs in Canada; VH-1, and EEntertainment in the U.S.; and BBC in the U.K.

Larry is a weekly columnist for EncoreCelebrity Access in the U.S. He was a co-founder of the late Canadian music trade, The Record; and, until 2007, the Canadian bureau chief of Billboard for 16 years.

He has been quoted on music industry issues in hundreds of publications including Time, Forbes, the London Times, and the New York Times.

He has acted as a consultant for Heritage Canada, The Canadian Competition Bureau, The Canadian Assn of Broadcasters, The Canadian Private Copying Collective, and the Neighbouring Rights Collective of Canada as well as such Canadian media group as Astral Media, CHUM Radio, Rogers Communications, The Evanov Group, and Harvard Broadcasting.

The LeBlanc Newsletter is exclusively carried and archived by Canadian Music Week in Canada at: http://www.cmw.net/cmw2009

it is available In the U.S. at EncoreCelebrity
Access: http://encore.celebrityaccess.com

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