SOCAN member Pierre Lapointe hosted the Premier Gala de l’ADISQ on Oct. 23, 2019, at Montréal’s MTELUS, and he’s embarked on a mission to remind the relevant government agencies that it’s urgent to act if we want music creators to be compensated fairly for their work.

He talked about this when he appeared on the popular talk show Tout le monde en parle as well as on the French CBC’s ICI Première station, during his opening number at the Premier Gala de l’ADISQ, and during his presentation of the Album of the Year – Pop award at the Sunday night gala.

We caught up with him in the press room of the Premier Gala and asked him to explain his position, and offer concrete measures to break the deadlock that has gripped the Québec music ecosystem for several years. This gridlock is in part caused by new technologies, and the shift in the ways consumers listen to music with the arrival of streaming platforms, as well as the refusal of DSPs to give back a reasonable portion of their revenue to creators who feed them the cultural content on which they depend.

We also followed up on this question with other SOCAN members to ask them where they stand on this issue. What do we do now? How do we get more revenue? Is it possible to make a living as a musician in 2019? You’ll hear answers from Robert Nelson, Les Louanges, KNLO, Claude Bégin, Dominique Fils-Aimé, Alexandra Stréliski, Millimetrik, Elisapie, Wesli, and Hubert Lenoir.