Parades and weddings, potatoes and beans

You want to hold a parade and have Stompin’ Tom Connors blasting through the speakers on your float? You want to hold a wedding at a public venue and play Shania Twain for the bride and groom to dance to? Well, from now on you’re going to have to pay for it. So much you won’t be able to march or marry any more. At least, that’s what recent articles in the popular press would have you believe. But from where I sit (in the seats reserved for the unpopular press, I guess), they’ve got it all wrong and it doesn’t amount to a hill of beans.

It all has to do with copyright law. Which is a very complex subject. But I was the one who brought it up, so it’s my fault if your eyes glaze over at what follows.

If I create a work of music, I own the copyright in it. That means no one can record it, or perform it in public, without my permission. The copyright lasts until 50 years after my death (which explains, to those who notice these things, why so many Hank Williams tribute albums came out starting in 2004). Permission is usually granted by paying a fee.

In Canada, an organization called SOCAN has about 95,000 song-creator members, on behalf of whom it collects fees for the public airing of their works. SOCAN applies to something called the Copyright Appeal Board for the right to license and set fees for the use of the music. About 80 per cent of the fees collected are then passed back to the creators—who have tended to view this as a good thing, since it helps to put food on the table.

So, just to pick an example, if I owned a fitness club, I would be required to pay an annual licence fee to SOCAN for the right to play recorded music of $2.14 times the average number of persons per week per room. Radio stations, planes, shopping malls, bars: they all pay a fee to and get a licence from SOCAN.

What has recently happened is that a collective representing music performers, by the name of Re:Sound, has been authorized to collect fees on a broad swath of public performances of recorded music. Technically, there is no copyright in a performance, so what Re: Sound collects is referred to as “equitable remuneration.”

Re:Sound applied to the Board to establish a fee structure on the airing of recorded music to accompany live entertainment; receptions, conventions, assemblies and fashion shows; karaoke bars; festivals, exhibitions and fairs; circuses, ice shows and fireworks displays; parades; and parks and other public areas. And the Board has recently authorized the fees. So that’s where the press has got the idea that parades and weddings are going to be put out of business.

But now we’ve got the theory sort of straight, let’s look at the numbers. In a parade, Re:Sound will be able to charge $4.39 per float with recorded music. But that’s only half of the already existing SOCAN rate of $8.78. That’s right: you should have had a SOCAN licence for that float in the Canada Day parade before you crank up the volume on “Bud the Spud.”

In point of fact, parades and parade music are small potatoes. Re:Sound is expecting to draw in less than $3,000 from them. The big ticket item is “receptions, conventions, assemblies and fashion shows.” Those are expected to pull in over $1.5 million per year, again at about half the existing SOCAN rate. But don’t cancel that wedding just yet.

Let’s assume that weddings constitute one quarter of all of those receptions, conventions, assemblies and fashion shows. Now, according to one website I checked, there will be an estimated 157,866 weddings in Canada during 2012. If my mental arithmetic is right, that means that each wedding will cost about $2.50 more than the facility holding the event already pays. That may not be small potatoes, but it’s still a few truckloads short of amounting to a hill of beans, at least on a per-wedding basis.

Speaking of weddings, I discovered a website called ourweddingsongs.com, which suggests appropriate songs for each element of a wedding—the ceremony, the bouquet toss, the garter toss, the father/ daughter dance and so on. I notice that for “first dance” songs, “From this Moment” by Shania Twain places a respectable ninth. “Bud the Spud” doesn’t seem to be on the list at all.

The top song? It’s “At Last,” sung by the late, great Etta James. But someone else wrote it—she’s just the performer.

David Simmonds’s writing is also available at www.grubstreet.ca.