OffKey Season 3 Episode 10: The Songwriter’s Royalty Collections
This week on OffKey, we’re turning to a big topic for any songwriter looking to build and sustain a career in music: royalty collections. I had the pleasure of speaking with Mike McCarty and Holly Fagan-Lacoste from SOCAN and Rebecca Webster from CMRRA to learn how the songwriter gets paid when their songs are played. We discussed how royalty rates are determined, how usage data is collected, and why these organizations are so important to songwriters. I hope you enjoy our conversations and that this episode is helpful to any music creators out there looking to make money from their music!
The Songwriter’s Royalty Collections
As we’ve followed the Songwriter’s path throughout this season, we’ve learned about their rights and the various players on their team. This week, we’re moving on to the next essential component of building a career in the music industry: getting paid when your music is played. Thinking about how a music creator gets paid for the use of their work brings us back to the concept of the copyright.
Copyright is created from the moment an original piece of work — whether it’s a painting, novel, or song — is created. In a song, there is a bundle of copyrights made up of two distinct parts: the copyright in the composition, held by songwriters and music publishers, and the copyright in a sound recording, held by the master rights holders such as the recording artist or label. When a song first comes into existence, the songwriter or songwriters control and own the copyright over that song; however, they can choose to assign their copyright to other players who may then take on ownership and capitalize on the songwriter’s copyright. For example, as we discussed in the episode on publishing deals, when a songwriter signs with a publisher, they assign the copyright of their composition to the publishing company, who then licenses the composition to be used in TV and films or for a recording artists’ new album and splits the profit with the songwriter according to the split laid out in the contract.
In order for a songwriter to collect royalties, they assign their rights to a collections society who then administers and represents the rights of songwriters to collect royalties on the use of their compositions. The primary income-generating rights for songwriters that these societies represent are: the performing right and the reproduction or “mechanical” right. The performing right is the right to perform a song in public — e.g. background music in a restaurant or bar, live in a concert, on the radio or on TV. This right generates “public performance royalties” for songwriters when they authorize the use of their songs to be performed in public. The reproduction right, or “mechanical” right, is the right to authorize the reproduction of their work in CDs, records, and digital media.
To collect royalties from these rights, every country has their own system of collections. In Canada, the key organization for collecting public performance royalties is the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN). While SOCAN is now branching out into mechanical collections after absorbing the organization SODRAC, for publishers and self-publishing songwriters, the key collections organization for reproduction or mechanical royalties is the Canadian Musical Reproduction Rights Agency (CMRRA).
First, let’s learn more about the performance rights side from SOCAN. I had the pleasure of speaking with Mike McCarty & Holly Fagan-Lacoste from SOCAN to learn more about what the organization does, how to register, and how songwriters make money. Here’s what I learned:
- SOCAN offers many programs to support songwriters’ creative development including educational workshops and songwriting camps.
- For collecting usage data, SOCAN is one of the global leaders in techniques and technological innovation. Tracking usage data down with people and computers, SOCAN accounts for millions of performances every day of songs in their repertoire.
- Once data is collected, there are various royalty rates for different types of usage of a song. These tariffs are set by the Copyright Board of Canada, and change according to negotiations with organizations like SOCAN and the Songwriters Association of Canada.
SOCAN is Canada’s Performance Rights Organization or PRO and/ they collect primarily for songwriter’s performance rights. But what about reproduction rights? While SOCAN is branching out into mechanical rights, the primary organization for collections on these rights is CMRRA. I spoke with Rebecca Webster from CMRRA to learn more about the agency. Here’s what I learned:
- CMRRA collects royalties for music publishers and self-publishing songwriters and represents 95% of the market for reproduction rights in Canada.
- CMRRA negotiates royalty rates independently of the Copyright Board of Canada, which means they can advocate for better rates with companies directly.
- The agency has started a very helpful initiative called the Unclaimed Works Portal, where songwriters and publishers can match recordings to musical works in the database and provide any missing information in order to collect all the royalties owed to them.
Getting paid for the songs you write is absolutely crucial, and organizations like SOCAN and CMRRA are here for that very purpose. In such a highly competitive industry, it’s important for songwriters to register with these organizations to earn money, and also to take advantage of the other resources and educational workshops they offer to support your professional development as a music creator.
Thank you to Mike McCarty and Holly Fagan-Lacoste from SOCAN and Rebecca Webster from CMRRA for their contributions!
If you have any topics you would like me to cover in future episodes, please feel free to reach out via email to offkey@membran.net. Otherwise I can be found on Instagram at @membranlabs or @taliyasw
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