If you're a Canadian musician and you haven't registered with SOCAN yet, you're leaving real money uncollected every time your song plays on the radio, streams on Spotify, or gets licensed in a film.
SOCAN (Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada) is Canada's performing rights organization, and it collects two distinct types of royalties on your behalf.
Performance Rights
Every time your song is performed or broadcast publicly, a performance royalty is generated. This includes:
- Radio airplay (CBC, campus radio, commercial stations)
- Live performances at licensed venues
- Streaming on platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube
- TV, film, and commercial placements
- Background music in restaurants, bars, and retail spaces
SOCAN collects fees from these businesses and broadcasters directly and distributes the money to the writers and publishers on record. If your song isn't registered, that money gets redistributed to someone else.
Reproduction Rights
In 2017, SOCAN acquired SODRAC and expanded into reproduction rights. This covers the mechanical right, meaning the right to reproduce your composition as a recording. Think of it this way: performance rights cover the song being heard; reproduction rights cover the song being copied or duplicated.
This applies to:
- Digital downloads (iTunes, Bandcamp)
- On-demand streams (Spotify, Apple Music)
- Synced to video (YouTube, TikTok, Instagram Reels)
- Physical manufacturing (CDs, vinyl)
Why Both Matter
Most artists only think about performance royalties. But every stream you get triggers both a performance royalty AND a mechanical royalty. If you're only collecting one, you're splitting your own income in half without knowing it.
Registering with SOCAN covers both streams under one roof, which is one of the advantages of the Canadian system versus the U.S., where writers have to register with separate organizations for each right.
How to Register
- Go to socan.com and create a member account
- Register yourself as a writer and/or publisher
- Register each song (title, co-writers, ownership splits)
- Submit a live performance log for shows at SOCAN-licensed venues
- Make sure your distributor is reporting your streams correctly
Registration is free for songwriters. SOCAN takes a small admin percentage from collected royalties before distributing.
One thing to watch: if you co-write songs, all writers need to be SOCAN members and ownership splits need to be agreed on and registered before royalties are distributed. How you handle those splits as a band is a bigger conversation, and one we'll be covering in a dedicated post soon.
Want This as a Download?
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This is Part 1 of the Canadian Artist Royalty Guide. Next up: the royalty stream nobody told you about, and why most Canadian artists have never collected a single dollar of it.