In May 2020, Canadian collecting society Socan became one of the first PROs to launch a licensing scheme for livestreamed concerts. It was called ‘Encore’ and would pay songwriters and publishers when their work was used in livestreams on Facebook and Instagram – with the money carved out from its licensing deal with Facebook.
Encore was designed as a temporary fix, but now it’s expanding into a permanent licensing scheme, now also including concerts on YouTube and Twitch. The scheme will cover both free and paid/ticketed concerts online.
For free events, $75 will be distributed between the publishing rightsholders of songs played. For paid events, Socan says “performance royalties will be distributed to rights holders as they would be for in-person concerts”. And all these measures will continue after the Covid-19 pandemic subsides.
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