Canada’s only performing royalty collection agency is SOCAN. SOCAN collect for all types of usage of music in business.
In our case we are interested in background music licensing. For example, a restaurant of 4000 square feet will cost CA$458.40 per year.
Interestingly, if you choose to sign up to a music supplier who is using music assigned to SOCAN (i.e. not royalty free music), the music supplier is also charged by SOCAN for distribution of music at a rate (currently) of 2.25% of the total fee to you a business user. So you are also paying this as a ‘tax’ on the subscription fee, that goes straight back to SOCAN also.
To avoid both these fees you either play no music at all, make your own original compositions, or use artist’s music who are not signed directly to SOCAN or their own collection agency use SOCAN to collection for them specifically in Canada.
The simpler alternative is to choose Melody Pods who provide a single fee for the supply of a collection of music which is updated each month which is all inclusive of all the performing and compositional rights to use that music. Since we don’t sign SOCAN to collect our royalties for us, nor do we assign our music to anyone else, you always know our music is free from any additional performing or compositional rights collection royalties and licenses.
Melody Pods. Simple, affordable music from that cool little computer in your pocket.
Canadian copyright agents list located here: http://www.cb-cda.gc.ca/societies-societes/index-e.html
An independent overview of Canadian copyright law is covered nicely at: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_Canada