Music Biz to Dentists: Pay Up Beyotchez!

Many dentists pained by prospect of paying licence fee for office music
By John McKay
TORONTO (CP) — The soothing background music playing in the dentist’s waiting room.
Those cute pop-song cellphone rings. Even the radio station played to a telephone caller put on hold.
All of this recorded music used in the professional workplace is subject to a royalty fee, payable to the creators or copyright owners.
So says SOCAN, the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada, a national copyright collective that works on behalf of its 70,000 members — songwriters, composers and publishers — to ensure they are compensated for reproductions and public performances of their intellectual property.
While SOCAN has always pursued the collection of such fees, the organization escalated its efforts last May with a “tele-sales” campaign aimed at everything from medical offices to skating rinks, even government departments.
“We’re finding that more and more places are using music continually for a variety of reasons,” says Lawrence Godfrey, SOCAN regional sales manager. “And we needed to get there for our members. You have to realize that this is their livelihood.”
So SOCAN opened a small department that began contacting businesses by letter and telephone to either remind or inform them of their obligation to fill out the required form and pay a fee for the music they were employing, not for personal use, but as a marketing tool.
That fee amounts to less than $100 a year for the average-sized reception area or waiting room, which is less, says Godfrey, than they might spend on magazines or a tropical fish tank. Surprisingly, he says there has been widespread compliance, especially after bodies like the Retail Council of Canada and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business advised their members to go along.
“On one end, we do get people who immediately comply — they see the need to do that — and on the other end, naturally, you’re always going to have some people who say ‘Well, I don’t see the value in this.”’
Godfrey declined to say how much they’ve collected in the past year’s push, but for those who refuse, he maintains it is a violation of the federal Copyright Act and subject to a penalty, although so far no one’s been taken to court.
“At the end of the day, the law is the law,” says Godfrey. “I don’t mean to sound too much like (former prime minister Jean) Chretien when I say that but the law is the law.”
But not everyone is convinced.
Toronto dentist Dr. Shelly Baker says he hasn’t been approached yet by SOCAN collectors but wonders how they could monitor or enforce the situation.
“There’s definitely no law that says that I can’t play the radio in my office,” Baker maintains. “Does that mean I’m going to have to pay when I listen to the radio in my car?
“I think they’re just pissed off because they lost the battle with the Internet.”
Baker says if his office is billed by SOCAN, he and his partners will discuss it and seek legal advice.
Another Toronto dentist received a SOCAN notice that was distinctly less amiable than Godfrey.
“Our records indicate that you were initially contacted in 2003 and ample opportunity was given to complete the forms and remit payment,” says a sternly worded letter sent in early April. “A licence fee for your use of background music in 2004 is now required.”
The cost of Tariff 15.A background music, the dentist is advised, is “just 11.46 cents per square foot of the listening area in the practice.”
Ken Swartz, communications manager for the Ontario Dental Association, says his group, which represents 80 per cent of the province’s dentists, has been getting regular queries about the SOCAN fee demands. Swartz says they do not provide legal advice to members but he believes that the Copyright Act is clear in that no royalties are required for playing a radio receiver anywhere but in a theatre or a place of entertainment.
“If you look at their Tariff 15.A it doesn’t say radio anywhere on their form,” Swartz notes.
“The legislation itself clearly says that the radio is exempt. Radio stations are already paying.”
He believes the same goes for radio music piped into an office telephone system and played to a caller while on hold.
It’s complicated. Apparently, a simple desk-top radio is OK. But if radio music is piped throughout the office on more than four speakers, it qualifies as a re-broadcast and thus is eligible for royalty payments.
SOCAN has even contacted lawyers’ offices but Godfrey declines to describe the response there.
“We’re doing God’s work,” he quips.
SOCAN was established in 1990 out of two former rights societies, CAPAC and BMI Canada.
In 2002, it collected and redistributed more than $166 million in domestic licence fees and domestic and international royalties.