Tom Cochrane celebrates receiving the Cultural Impact Award for “Life is a Highway,” and speaks to us about how writing the song served as therapy for himself, and why that resonated with such a large audience.
Photo by Brad Ardley
Photo by Gaëlle Leroyer
Video: Vulgaires Machins present Disruption
Story by Eric Parazelli | Wednesday October 19th, 2022
After 12 years of silence, crucial Québec punk band Vulgaires Machins is back with its signature protest songs, full of heady choruses and joyous riffs. On Disruption, the band’s eighth album, the quartet demonstrates that it’s possible to evolve and re-invent yourself musically, in order to avoid repeating what you’ve done before, but ultimately remain relevant to your era. And if Vulgaires Machins is, first and foremost, a vehicle to share the lucid vision of its two songwriters, Guillaume Beauregard and Marie-Ève Roy, it’s she who’s driving that vehicle by getting more involved than ever in the writing and interpretation of their songs. If the subject this time is more focused on introspection and the search for meaning and empathy than on cynical social criticism, some songs are witness the evolution of the group’s musical signature along some surprising avenues. We invited the creative couple to a virtual meeting so that they could tell us more about the process, and the reflection, that led to the album Disruption.
Photo by courtesy/courtoisie. Left to right/De gauche à droite : Barbara McIvor, Ryan O'Grady, Virginie Bujold-Paré, Jazz Alvarado (Segovia), Karl Marino
Meet the new faces of SOCAN’s Reproduction Rights team
Story by Amal Y | Wednesday October 19th, 2022
In the last few months, SOCAN’s Reproductions Rights department team has welcomed five new colleagues to the team. Barbara McIvor and Ryan O’Grady joined as Repertoire Administrators while Virginie Bujold-Paré joined the team as a Collections & Distribution Specialist. Jazz Alvarado (Segovia) is our new Identification & Distribution Administrator, Foreign, while Karl Marino was added as a Royalties & Distribution Specialist.
McIvor and O’Grady’s responsibilities include maintaining and updating our clients’ catalogues in the SOCAN Reproduction Rights system, to help facilitate accurate licensing and royalty collections.
McIvor has a diploma in Music Business Administration from Trebas Institute, and has worked in the music industry in both Vancouver and Toronto. For the last seven years, she’s worked primarily in publishing and copyright. She’s held roles at CMRRA as a Major Label Licensing Administrator, and at Re:Sound as a Repertoire Administrator – where she gained experience in both reproduction rights and neighbouring rights, and in maintaining and updating copyright claims from clients.
Ryan O’Grady is a musician, songwriter, producer, and engineer who has been a SOCAN member for the past decade. His internship at a music label gave him additional knowledge of publishing and copyright. He also earned a Master’s degree in music technology and digital media from the University of Toronto.
As our Collections and Distribution Specialist, Virginie Bujold-Paré handles distribution reports, generates invoices, and deals with collections for synchronization and physical products from various reproduction rights licensees. She loves music and finance, and gets to combine her two passions in her role on the Reproductions Rights team. Bujold-Paré previously worked as a dispute and fraud specialist at CIBC. She’s a violinist and musicologist, and graduated from La Sorbonne, in Paris.
Jazz Alvarado (Segovia), our new Identification and Distribution Administrator, Foreign, will focus on retrieving, reconciling, and matching distribution files from our sister societies, worldwide. Alvarado previously worked at Universal Music, and the Colombian Copyright office. She was responsible for registering intellectual property, processing works, and reviewing sheet music to ensure rights holders were accurately credited. She’s completed a Bachelor’s degree in audio engineering, and another in composition for film, with a minor in copyright law.
Karl Marino, our Royalties and Distribution Specialist, is responsible for understanding the end-to-end royalty distribution cycle, including how to prepare distribution files for both domestic and foreign revenue streams, as well as identification and matching activities related to all SOCAN Reproduction Rights income streams. Before joining SOCAN, Marino worked for a music platform vendor that helped distribute sound recording royalties to artists. He holds a degree in Film Scoring & Jazz Performance from Berklee College of Music, and both B.A. and a Master’s degrees in Classical Guitar interpretation.
The team is guided by Valerie Dansereau, Team Lead, Repertoire, and Lise Carle, Team Lead, Royalties and Distribution. Everyone reports to Nicole Pratt, Vice President, Reproduction Rights Operations.