CISAC Global Collections Report shows creators’ royalties down by € 1 billion in 2020

Story by Tiana Feng | Wednesday October 27th, 2021

The International Confederation of Societies of Authors (CISAC) has announced that worldwide royalty collections for creators of music, audiovisual, art, drama and literary works fell by 9.9% in 2020 with losses amounting to more than € 1 billion as a result of the global pandemic.  

 According to the Global Collections Report, total collections fell to €9.32 billion as live and public performance revenue nearly halved across the world. However, the decline was mitigated by a strong rise in digital royalties, reflecting a sharp increase in audio and visual streaming around the world.  

 “When I took on the presidency of CISAC in May 2020, the subjugation of the creator was already a massive issue. Then COVID struck, highlighting two things. First, that streaming is fast heading towards being the most important source of creators’ earnings in the future. And second, that streaming revenues, however fast they grow, are currently simply not providing a fair reward when shared across millions of individual recipients,” said CISAC President Bjorn Ulvaeus. 

 For more highlights from CISAC’s 2021 Global Collections Report (for 2020 data), visit www.CISAC.org. 

 

Photo by courtesy of/courtoisie de African Music Week. Vivian Barclay, left/à gauche.

Vivian Barclay receives inaugural African Music Week Trailblazer Award

Story by Howard Druckman | Monday November 1st, 2021

Vivian Barclay, a member of SOCAN’s Board of Directors, was honoured by African Music Week with the organization’s first-ever Trailblazer Award, presented on Oct. 22 during the Queens Summit event, at the Small World Music Centre in downtown Toronto. SOCAN congratulates Vivian on this great achievement!

It’s only the latest accomplishment for Barclay, the General Manager of Warner Chappell Music Canada. A classically trained musician, she’s composed music for television commercials and won awards for her digital audio editing talents. She’s worked as a radio programmer and on-air host, in artist management, publicity/promotion, and as a programmer for conferences/festivals. Barclay sits on the Boards of SOCAN, Music Publishers Canada, the Toronto Music Advisory Committee, the Toronto Council for the National Association of Black Female Executives in Music & Entertainment, as well as Phemphat Entertainment Group – producers of the all-female Honey Jam Showcase, a non-profit organization which provides mentoring opportunities for artists.

The sixth annual African Music Week (AMW) festival took place Oct. 22-23, 2021, continuing its mission to heighten the understanding of Africans and people of African descent through music and culture, with a series of events in Toronto. African musicians and music industry executives from throughout the African Diaspora gather at AMW each year for both the conference and showcase components, to expose artists to resources, networks, and platforms, while providing long-term mentoring to help launch and maintain careers in the global entertainment industry. Participants this year included TÖME, Idahams, Master T, and Dalton Higgins.

Photo by courtesy / courtoisie. Top Row/Rangée du haut : Abigail Neale, Merlin Bertrand-Hamel, Janal Bechthold, Nicholas Walker Grimshaw, Rebecca Everett, Jeff Alan Greenway. Bottom Row/Rangée du bas : Ciara Proznik, Erica Wong Ping Lun, Mandy Woo, Pascal Plante, Nick Nausbaum, Greg Andersen.

Screen Music Lab gives 10 emerging #ComposersWhoScore an opening shot

Story by Howard Druckman, with files from / avec la participation de Julien Boumard Coallier | Friday October 22nd, 2021

The SOCAN Foundation was pleased and proud to present a Screen Music Laboratory for emerging composers, from Oct. 18-21, hosted on Aire Ouverte, a 2D videogame-like platform, where a virtual SOCAN Foundation office was built. The SOCAN Foundation Screen Music Lab was officially sponsored by Bell Media and The Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television.

The Lab invited 10 emerging composers from across Canada to join one screen composing mentor, Janal Bechthold, and one film director mentor, Pascal Plante, over the four days – during which they composed music for film excerpts supplied by the director. Beyond this hands-on exercise, the program aimed to de-mystify, and build, the relationship between composers and directors, and helped the young composers evolve in a context very similar to the reality of their craft. To this end, the director organized a spotting session during which the participants had to deal with tight deadlines, while working alongside Plante, with guidance from Bechthold.

The 10 participants were:

At the two-hour closing event, from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. on Oct. 21, the 10 participants spent the first hour introducing themselves to the invited industry guests, and presenting the music they’d composed to one of four different excerpts from the movie Nadia, Butterfly.
Addressing the attendees before the film excerpts were shown, SOCAN Foundation Executive Director Charlie Andrews said, “We know that music plays such an important role in film and television, and other media.” That was increasingly apparent when listening to the young participants’ unique and emotionally accurate scores as each of the film clips were shown; they indisputably brought the scenes to life.

The second hour of the event was an online, within-the-videogame networking session with people from the music and screen industries, including representatives from the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television (ACCT), the Canadian Media Producers Association (CMPA), the Screen Composers Guild of Canada (SCGC), SPCAQ, and APEM, as well as Charlie Andrews, SOCAN Foundation program Co-Ordinator Julien Boumard Coallier (who largely organized the program and the event), and new SOCAN A&R Representative Guggan Singh.