At the 2023 JUNO Awards, SOCAN briefly caught up with many of our members on the red carpet. Here’s what some of them had to say…

 

We chatted with JUNOs 2023 Breakthrough Group of the Year nominee Wild Rivers about performing at The JUNO Awards Songwriter’s Circle, presented by SOCAN, and connecting with their audience.

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Click on the image to view the interview with Wild Rivers

Pierre Kwenders, 2022 Polaris Prize Winner, and 2023 JUNO nominee for Global Music Album of the Year, talked with us about how music is a universal language.

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Click on the image to play the Pierre Kwenders interview video

JUNOs 2023 performer and JUNOs 2022 Rap Album/EP of the Year winner Haviah Mighty discussed the importance of maintaining mental health.

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Click on the image to watch the interview with Haviah Mighty

Teen Daze, 2023 JUNO winner in the Electronic Album of the Year category, discusses moving from the underground electronic scene to Canada’s highest musical honour.

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Click on the image to view the interview with Teen Daze.

TikTok phenomenon Lauren Spencer-Smith, a 2023 JUNO double-nominee, for Artist of the Year and the Fan Choice Award, shares her unique perspective on the importance of carving out, and owning, your own path.

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Click on the image to view the interview with Lauren Spencer-Smith

 



Guillaume Morin, Saga Stratégie sonoreThe Association des professionnels de l’édition musicale (APEM) successfully hosted the seventh edition of its Music Tech Summit (Sommet musique et technologie) on March 23, 2023, at Centre Phi. This annual conference event aims to provide music publishers and other industry professionals with the tools they need to make the most of technology, and to keep them up-to-date about trends and technological developments in the industry.

Attendees were offered insightful presentations from several industry experts. The first was from Guillaume Morin of Saga Stratégie sonore and Andréa Leydet-De-Mendonsa of Gradiant AI,who discussed the collaboration between sound strategy and AI for music creation. Lysandre Champagne of the Observatoire de la culture et des communications du Québec (OCCQ) hosted the second presentation, during which she shared interesting data on music listening and consumption habits, spending, and how the Internet can be used for music.

Pierre B. Gourde, General Manager of MétaMusique, presented a session on the development of MétaMusique and the upcoming launch of its tool for capturing, indexing, and distributing music metadata. This introduction allowed attendees to discover the features and tools that simplify the task, and increase the discoverability of new releases.

Catalina Briceño, Chloé Sondervorst, Philippe Beaudoin, Sandra Rodriguez]Andreas Katsambas, President and COO of Chartmetric, gave a presentation in English that turned out to be a highlight of the day. He presented the types of metrics currently available to measure a title’s exposure to its potential audience, and how industry professionals can leverage those metrics.

The day’s activities ended with a round-table discussion, moderated by Catalina Briceño, with Chloé Sondervorst from Radio-Canada, Philippe Beaudoin from Waverly, and creator Sandra Rodriguez. They discussed the challenges and opportunities of artificial intelligence for the music industry. Finally, a networking cocktail party was organized, allowing attendees to connect and exchange ideas.



SOCAN members can now subscribe, at a 20 percent discount, to the powerful WIOpro audio-visual broadcast tracking tool, which enables songwriters, composers, screen composers, and music publishers to more accurately track their domestic and international screen performances. Use of the tracker is expected to increase transparency in those performances, and therefore increase the associated music royalties. You can subscribe now at http://wiopro.com.

Our members receive royalties from various sources, via SOCAN, when movies, series, and episodes  containing their music are broadcast, both domestically and globally. SOCAN relies on screen producers, broadcasters, music supervisors, and other stakeholders to provide music usage information via cue sheet submissions. Now, with WIOpro, SOCAN members can reliably track audio-visual broadcasts to reconcile and verify their royalty statements, as the software uses industry-standard electronic program guide data to generate easy-to-use reports.

“We’re extraordinarily pleased to be able to offer SOCAN members discounted access to WIOpro, a new industry standard in film/TV music royalties,” said Shawn Pierce, WIO President, CEO, and co-founder, and himself a Canadian television music composer. “Tested, solid, digital, and reliable, our platform empowers members, and SOCAN itself, to better handle the often difficult task of tracking down broadcasts missed due to cue sheet errors and other data problems. As I know from personal experience, that translates to money in the pocket.”

With WIOpro, a SOCAN member logs on, and populates their dashboard with the movies, series, or episodes they want to track. When they return to their dashboard days, weeks, or months later, they can run reports showing the cable and satellite television broadcasts of their programming in any of the 55 territories that WIOpro tracks, worldwide. They can then compare the data with their royalty statement, to find broadcasts where information hasn’t been submitted for royalty payment.

“SOCAN is pleased to be the first and only music rights organization offering its members discounted access to WIOpro, in partnership with WIO,” said Jean-Christian Céré, SOCAN’s Chief Membership Officer. “Their unique platform provides deep and clear insight into global television airings that are often difficult to obtain. We welcome WIOpro’s tracking and reporting as additional tools for our members to identify their performances more efficiently.”

That tracking is powered by the same broadcast data that cable and satellite systems use, making WIOpro efficient at finding unreported broadcasts of movies and episodes. Unlike audio detection systems, WIOpro reports are accepted and easily verified at most performing rights organizations and collective management organizations. Reports can be generated in formats such as PDF and CSV, the latter of which can be directly imported into spreadsheet programs, such as Excel.

WIO, which stands for “When’s It On?,” was originally founded because WIO CEO Pierce wanted insight into his own music catalogue and royalties. Using WIOpro, he uncovered about $50,000 in royalties that he would never have received otherwise.