SOCAN Offers Even More Transparency in North American Music Reproduction Rights

SOCAN has reinforced its digital reproduction rights business with Audiam’s launch of Layla, a unique music royalty income and tracking system specifically and only for Audiam clients.

When SOCAN acquired New York-based Audiam in July 2016, it added a state-of-the-art North American digital reproduction rights capability to its well-established Canadian Performing Rights activities, as Audiam’s offerings go far beyond the identification and administration of copyright music used in YouTube videos. Since that time, Audiam has steadily increased business, building and acquiring proprietary technology tools for music publishers with the goal to become the world’s leading digital reproduction rights agency.

With Layla, music publishers and self-published songwriters who are Audiam clients now have a system to track who is recording their songs, where they’re being listened to, how many times they’re streamed, how much each stream generates, what recordings are not being paid on and more.

Layla is an easy-to-use and customizable income tracking system online for Audiam clients to benefit from an overview of all reproduction royalty-generating compositions with the ability to view detailed information of what a composition earned on a specific streaming service, the number of streams and the exact royalty rate that each music service paid.

In addition, the system lets users view monetized YouTube videos and the exact reproduction royalty rate, along with the ability to view and hear a comprehensive list of every recording of a musical work, including those they previously did not know about.

“Audiam’s Layla not only displays massive amounts of data in easy to understand ways, but also analyzes and assures that the data is accurate,” said Audiam CEO Jeff Price. “It removes guesswork and simplifies administration, identifying and recovering earned but unpaid mechanical royalties and ensures publishers and songwriters get paid quickly and efficiently for every fraction of a penny earned.”

SOCAN administers performing rights royalties for music creators and publishers only in Canada. “Performances” of music include radio play, live events, digital streaming and use of music in audio-visual works. “Reproduction,” or “mechanical,” rights comprise the use of copyright musical compositions as permanent digital downloads; interactive streams; and on CDs, records, and tapes.