On SOCAN (or, the possible end of i(heart)music)

As you can see if you move your eyes just a little to the right, there's now a "Donate" button right at the top of the page. It's not something I want to be putting up there, and I'm not even sure it'll be much help, but unfortunately, due to recent events, I have little choice.

Here's the problem: yesterday I was contacted by SOCAN, the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada. It turns out that anytime a concert happens in which at least one member of any of the bands is also a member of SOCAN, the person promoting the show is legally required to pay fees to the Society to cover copyright royalties associated with the live performance of SOCAN-member songs. It doesn't matter if the band in question has already been paid directly for their performance, under Canadian copyright law SOCAN is legally entitled to either 3% of the door or $35, whichever is greater.

This isn't something I'd ever done, since I was once told, years ago, that if a show doesn't make any profit, then it doesn't matter. (Evidently the person who told me that didn't know the difference between "gross" and "net".) And, operating under that principle -- coupled with a firm belief that since no one's at a show to see me, I don't really deserve a cut of the door -- I've always made an effort to pay out any money received at the door to the bands who actually performed and got people out. In cases where there wasn't enough from the door to cover those costs, I've dipped into my own pocket to pay -- after all, as I said, concert-goers are there to see the band, not whoever organized it, so there's really not much reason for me to benefit financially from the hard work of the musicians on stage.Because of this, of the approximately 70 shows I've promoted over the last three years, there's only a handful from which I can say I actually made any kind of money.

Obviously, that's no defence. Being ignorant of a law doesn't make that law any less valid, and, as such, whatever the total comes to I'll pay, whether I can afford it or not.

Unfortunately, given that the royalty fees are going to be somewhere in the neighbourhood of $2,000, this is something that falls a whole lot closer to "not afford". It's a lot amount of money, particularly when you factor in finances that are already stretched thin by a wedding that's less than three months away.

As such, if anyone out there is willing to help cover the fees, you'll earn my eternal gratitude, plus some kind of public i(heart)music recognition. It doesn't matter if it's $1 or $5 or $50 or $1,000 (though if it's the latter, I'll probably come to wherever you live and clean your house out of gratitude), every little bit will help. I'm hoping to have some sort of show to help raise a bit of the money (with non-SOCAN artists, of course), but in the meantime, if anyone reading this can spare anything, I'll be incredibly grateful. I've generally avoided having ads on here, since I figure that a bit of hosting costs are a fair trade-off for getting so much great free music and having the opportunity to give exposure to so many wonderful artists, but this is a much larger expense than my bank account can withstand. I know that people generally aren't too fond of paying for music, and they certainly aren't inclined to give money to random strangers on the internet, but if you've at all liked what i(heart)music has done over the last few years, all I can ask for is your help.

(And if you want to get in touch about this, feel free to e-mail me.)