Songwriters' Perspectives

"I wholeheartedly believe that this model for file sharing should be embraced in all countries.  I fully support this proposal and if I can help to get it accepted and made legal, please let me know.  If SOCAN is a leader in this, great!   Let's get it rolling and it can be a template for other Performing Rights Societies throughout the world. With dwindling record sales because of the thievery, this might be the new paradigm of income source for all song writers."
Randy Bachman

"The CMCC wishes to congratulate and endorse the Songwriters Association of Canada in pushing this proposal forward. We think the Canadian government should be facilitating discussion over the merits of this forward thinking approach to file-sharing rather than introducing legislation that looks backwards to approaches that have already failed."
Andrew Cash for the Canadian Music Creators Coalition (CMCC)

"Monetizing 'file-stealing' is essential for the very profession of songwriting to continue.  America has lost more than half of its professional songwriters, in large part due to Internet piracy.  The Canadian approach is to be aplauded!"
Bart Herbison, Executive Director
The Nashville Songwriters Association International

"Imagine a world where barrels of oil, not songs, were being shared and given away over the Internet.  Within days these file-sharing networks would be forcibly dismantled, and executives from the ISPs would be waking up to lattes and subpoenas."
Greg Johnston

"There is much talk in our industry of the devaluing of music in the face of entertainment options and technological change. Nonsense. Humanity’s need for music is primal. The soundtracks of our lives accompany us through everything we do – working, praying, dancing, procreating.

The music we choose for that soundtrack makes a powerful statement about who we are. How we get it is a function of the age we live in. From sheet music to vinyl to digital, the medium changes but the song remains the same. As does the need for the creators of music to be rewarded for their invaluable contributions to our lives.

I’m a songwriter. It’s what I do and it’s who I am. I support monetizing music file sharing. "
Christopher Ward


"In 1944 my dad moved to New York from Toronto. He was a classical singer but sang Jazz and the pop music of the day. He left Canada because he could not make a living in Toronto. There was no ACTRA and you literally could not survive on what CBC radio and others were paying at the time. The parallels between then and now are obvious, only it's the songwriters and recording artists whose livelihood is threatened .A generation of listeners think music is free. The consumer has spoken and instead of trying to stop file sharing we must embrace its obvious advantages. We as an industry must support music monetizing and start getting paid for our work."
Marc Jordan

"One of the most commonplace misconceptions which I, as a songwriter, producer and recording artist run into when speaking to members of the consuming public about this situation is the concept that in obtaining copyrighted musical material for free, the consumer feels he/she is somehow "sticking it" to some vague "major corporations".

Somehow we have failed to make clear to them that creating high-quality recorded material both takes professional time and costs money, usually a lot of money, for everyone involved in the creative process.  No matter how the money to make a recording is obtained, at the end of the day, the cost of that recording falls to the artist. Whether the source of funding for a recording has come from a record company, from an arts funding organisation, or from personal loans which the artist has taken out, it is always just that--a loan--and the one who must repay that loan is the artist.  And the artist has no other means of repaying that loan other than the sale of that recorded product, and the artist does not see income from the recording until the loan, whatever its source, has been repaid.  The consumer is "sticking it" to no one other than the very artists they purport to admire and enjoy.

There is absolutely no difference between stealing a piece of recorded material which has accumulated costs all the way down the line during its production (recording studios, engineers, recording equipment which must acquired and maintained, artwork, printing, promotional materials and publicity-- all this must be paid for) and stealing any other manufactured product.   If the end product is taken without being paid for, there is no source from which to recover these costs, let alone any money for the artist  to live on.

It is stealing--plain and simple.

It is no different than walking into a clothing store and stealing the clothes.  Somehow the consuming public seems able to grasp this concept when it applies to sweaters, shoes, or groceries, but cannot understand that the same chain of costs  and the need for the artist to recover those costs and to make a living applies to the world of recorded music.

I do not understand why this is, but it is well past time that someone other than the consumer put a system in place to help us keep our music from being stolen.

It is no different than the fact that pretty much all traditional retail stores now have, and have had for years, electronic scanners at the exits in order to alert them when someone is attempting to leave the store with items they have not paid for.  We have a right to the income from the results of our labour, just as anyone else in any business has."
Joan Besen