By Ahmad Hathout
An association representing French-language music publishers wants the CRTC to collect and make public data from online streaming services to evaluate how well they are promoting Canadian content as part of its implementation of the Online Streaming Act.
In a Part 1 application published this month, the Association des Professionnels de L’edition Musicale (APEM) is urging the regulator to collect data on a quarterly basis from the streaming services related to the rank, title, artist, release data and origin of listens and impressions (where the music is displayed to the user) of the top musical scores that run on the services. Specifically, it wants that data for the 10,000 most popular musical pieces listened to in Canada, the top 5,000 Canadian musical scores, the top 5,000 French-language songs, and the top 5,000 non-Canadian musical pieces.
The group says this will allow publishers to evaluate the discovery of their music and compare the recommendations of Canadian French-speaking content against non-Canadian directories in those online services to ensure that the objectives of the new Broadcasting Act are being met.
The core component of the new law is to ensure that online streaming services are contributing “equitably” as traditional broadcasters to the Canadian system. That contribution is both monetary – such as the already ordered “base contribution” of five per cent of annual revenues – and/or through methods such as ease of discovery, which some foreign platforms already do by putting Canadian content in their own category.
The APEM is urging the release of such data to gauge how foreign streaming services recommend Canadian and French-language versus non-Canadian content to audiences.
“Given the size of the repertoire offered, companies’ recommendation tools play a fundamental role,” the French-language application says. “Our artists must have the chance to meet their audiences in order to earn income from online streaming services and build a career.”
The group says its members have struggled to reach their audiences, with a significantly smaller portion of royalties than expected making it into their artists’ pockets.
While it said data from the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) and the Quebec Observatory of Culture and Communications (OCCQ) are informative, they are limited in that they are not instructive on listens from online services.
“We have very little objective information about the promotion and recommendation of musical pieces in Canada,” the APEM says. “We therefore do not know how the promotion of Canadian and French-language musical pieces compares to the promotion of non-Canadian musical pieces in Canada.”
The group is urging the CRTC collect the data starting this fall to be used in the audio phase of its consultations to implement the new Broadcasting Act next year.
“Without obtaining precise data on the discovery, promotion and recommendation of music in Canada, the Commission will not be able to make decisions based on evidence or measure whether online music streaming services adequately contribute to the objectives of the Broadcasting Act, in particular with regard to the development of Canadian expression through programming primarily in French and English, and the promotion of national identity and our cultural sovereignty,” the APEM says in its application.
Online streaming services, however, have been very cagey about the data they collect, so the APEM may see some resistance.
APEM says its application is supported by other similar organizations, including SOCAN, ADISQ, ANIM, Artisti, FCCF, GMMQ, la SOPROQ, SPACQ-AE, and UDA.
