When your royalties don’t amount to what you expected, or worse, have gone missing entirely, there’s probably an issue with the cue sheet. We bring together software developers, designers, music and tech industry mentors to rethink and refine the cue sheet process. We’re inviting tech savvy, solutions-minded people to join us April 9-10, 2022 in Toronto.
Imagine you are a composer: you’ve finished a beautiful musical score for a television show. It airs, you’ve poured your creative heart into it, and your friends are seeing it and loving it. As a composer, performance royalties from television shows make up a big part of your livelihood, and the key to receiving those royalties is a Cue Sheet – the lengthy and cumbersome document that identifies all of the music and its stakeholders in a production.
The Screen Composers Guild of Canada and SOCAN have partnered with the Canada Council for the Arts, the SOCAN Foundation, Songwriters Association of Canada, the Société professionelle des auteurs et des compositeurs du Québec, Music Publishers Canada, and Devpost to create this unique opportunity to transform how screen composers are paid for their work.
“Music Cue Sheets are the means by which music creators register their musical works in audio visual productions. They contain all of the information necessary to track and pay out performing and reproduction rights royalties to composers, songwriters and music publishers. And these royalties provide financial stability to the often unpredictable livelihoods of music creators, allowing them to keep doing what they do so well – creating music!” says John Welsman, President of the Screen Composers Guild of Canada.
“We’re only just beginning to realize the potential of technology to allow music creators to receive what they have rightfully earned from their work,” says SOCAN CEO Jennifer Brown. “This hackathon is an opportunity to bring speed and accuracy to what traditionally has been an extremely complicated process, and SOCAN is excited to see the results.”
We’re pleased to welcome award-winning Canadian composer Amin Bhatia, VP of CONNECT Music Licensing Catherine Jones, Executive Director of the SOCAN Foundation Charlie Wall-Andrews, and Michael Nunan, Senior Manager, Broadcast Operations (Audio) at Bell Media to our roster of hackathon judges.
Our industry mentors include technologist/media and entertainment industry professional Mathew Sherman, a 29 year veteran of BellMedia, composer/software developer Toby Sherriff, University of Toronto Adjunct Professor, Music Technology & Digital Media Program, Catherine Moore, Justin Gray, Songwriter/Producer and Founder of MDIIO.com, and Barnaby Marshall, Chief Technology Officer, Slaight Music.
Teams will vy for cash prizes, and the winning team also receives registrations for Canadian Music Week 2022, happening this April.
Developer teams will use sponsor APIs or SDKs in combination with other tech to build something more efficient and user-friendly — this could revolutionize how payment processes work, freeing up composers’ time to do what they do best: make more music!
We’re inviting tech savvy, solutions-minded people to join us April 9-10th, 2022 in Toronto! Interested in being a Partner or Sponsor? Email here.