At the International Indigenous Music Summit 2025, SOCAN held a breakfast session, Breaking Down Music Rights and Royalties, on June 4, explaining the vital role that our organization plays in the broader music industry and ecosystem. SOCAN Creative Executive Houtan Hodania and Administrative Co-Ordinator, Creative, Claire Boué, discussed the wide range of benefits available to our members, including valuable resources, funding opportunities, and dedicated support from our Creative and Membership teams.
Specifically, they talked about all of the entities from which we collect royalties; the importance of registering songs with SOCAN in order to collect royalties; SOCAN Houses, song camps, and Words & Music online magazine; SOCAN Foundation grants and programs; the royalty calculator on the SOCAN member portal; how to access the list of concerts with no set lists in the portal; and how to give notice of live performances to SOCAN, in order to collect royalties for them.
The same day, IIMS 2025 presented The Perfect Pitch: The Artist’s Journey to a Sync Deal, a panel of sync experts, including the moderator, publisher Kim Temple (Six Shooter, High Priestess Music Publishing); music supervisor Rick Clark (Dark Winds, Hell on Wheels); sync agent Michelle Allman-Esdaille (The Hook Sync Group); Jordan Howe (Daytripper Music Publishing); and music supervisor Michael Perlmutter, of Instinct Entertainment (North of North, The Handmaid’s Tale).
After Temple explained that “if you’re a songwriter, you’re also a music publisher,” she also outlined the differences between the rights to a master recording and those to a song itself (the lyrics and music). Various panelists agreed that licensing a song to a screen production can be much quicker and easier for them if it’s a “one-stop clearance” – where one person controls all of the licensing, for the master recording, the song, and the publishing. Perlmutter played a scene from North of North featuring Tanya Tagaq, who both acts and has synced songs in the series, which has licensed songs written almost entirely by First Nations, Métis, and Inuktitut songwriters.
Temple advised songwriters to obtain permission from their co-writers in advance, if they want to pitch a co-written song to screen productions, to make it easier to license. Various panelists agreed that songwriters need to do their research on the pitch-target TV show or movie, watching previous episodes of it, or earlier movies by the same director, to ensure that their music fits. Allman-Esdaille said that TV shows or movies “train” you as to what the creative team of that production will want to hear, and that you can identify feature moments of tension, happiness, or finality, where your song might fit. All emphasized that the song doesn’t sell the story, it supports the mood of a moment in the story. Although music supervisors send out briefs (outlining what they’re looking for) to their preferred music publishers and songwriters, all remain open to pitches. And all said that pitched songs require complete metadata, which includes song share splits; the names of the artist, songwriters, publishers; and the lyrics. It also helps to provide music supervisors with an instrumental version of the song. Their preferred avenues of pitches are the Disco and Soundcloud apps.