The Mandate and Purpose of the Study

This study is an update of research carried out by the author and Louis Landreville in 2002 at the request of the Department of Canadian Heritage. The Department was interested in (1) the impact of the adoption and coming into force of the (then recent) 1997 amendments to the Copyright Act, particularly as they relate to those amendments; and (2) the status of the relationships between the various players involved in the production and distribution of sound recordings in Canada.

The 1997 amendments to the Copyright Act included the creation of two key rights that have had a major impact on the music industry:

  • neighbouring rights (the right of performers and owners of sound recordings to receive equitable remuneration when their performances and sound recordings are performed in public or communicated to the public by telecommunication); and

  • the private copying right (the right to make private copies subject to a levy on blank audio recording media intended to compensate performers, owners of sound recordings and the authors and owners of musical works embodied in those sound recordings for royalties for the resulting loss).

The neighbouring rights provisions gave rise to the creation of a new collective, the Neighbouring Rights Collective of Canada (NRCC).

The private copyright provisions also gave rise to the creation of a new collective, the Canadian Private Copyright Collective (CPCC).

Because the focus of this report is the impact of the two new regimes affecting the music industry, the collectives will be grouped under the two broad headings related to those new regimes as follows:

NEIGHBOURING RIGHTS:

NRCC
Neighbouring Rights Collective of Canada

Makers:

AVLA
AVLA Audio‑Video Licensing Agency Inc
SOPROQ
Quebec Collective Society for the Rights of Makers of Sound and Video Recordings

Performers:

ArtistI
Société de gestion collective de l'union des artistes inc.
AFM
American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada
ACTRA PRS
Alliance of Canadian Cinema Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA) Performers' Rights Society

PRIVATE COPYING:

CPCC
Canadian Private Copying Collective

Performers/Makers:

NRCC
Neighbouring Rights Collective of Canada (treated above)

Authors/Publishers:

CMRRA
Canadian Musical Reproduction Rights Agency Ltd.
SODRAC
Society for the Reproduction Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers in Canada
SOCAN
Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers of Canada

Because so much of the revenue from the exploitation of protected sound recordings and musical works is collected and distributed by collectives, the focus of the study is the operations and interrelationships of those collectives, including, for each collective:

  1. History and Structure
  2. Members and Membership
  3. Operations
    • Repertoire Administration
    • Relationship with Users
  4. Distribution of Royalties
  5. Cooperation with Other Collectives
  6. Revenue Growth Attributable to the Amendments
  7. Current Concerns

Following its detailed study of the collectives, the report examines the relationships between and among authors, composers, publishers, artists, sound recording companies (“makers”) and record distributors, including the differences and similarities between the record production industries in Canada's francophone (Québec) and anglophone sectors.