End of Talks About a Proposed Alliance Between SODRAC, CMRRA and SOCAN

MONTREAL, QUEBEC--(Marketwired - Dec. 18, 2013) - The Society for Reproduction Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers in Canada (SODRAC) recently took part in talks involving a proposed alliance with CMRRA and SOCAN with a view to creating an integrated approach to performance and reproduction rights management in Canada for all authors, composers and music publishers. SODRAC actively supported this undertaking in anticipation of the benefits that rightsholders and music users would have derived from such an alliance. Despite all our efforts, we regret to announce today that the related discussions have broken off and will not be resuming in the future.

Indeed, the publishers' agency CMRRA recently informed its counterparts that following a unanimous decision of its board of directors, it no longer intends to move forward with the proposed alliance. Among other things, CMRRA was not satisfied that its independent interests would be protected sufficiently by the proposed management structure and governance provisions.

SODRAC's president, Frédéric Weber, offered these comments on behalf of SODRAC's board members: "We are disappointed that the proposed alliance, which was designed to simplify the process of obtaining musical licences and to reduce short and long-term management costs for all authors, composers and music publishers, will not be seeing the light of day, despite the solutions proposed by the parties with a view to facilitating the pooling of their operations."

SODRAC's general manager, Alain Lauzon, emphasized how important it was for SODRAC to reaffirm its distinctive business model in the area of collective management of reproduction rights, adding that SODRAC remains open to promising new initiatives and that as an organization representing authors' interests, it reserve a place for both authors and theirs publishers while ensuring that they benefit from all ways in which their works are used.

SODRAC would like to thank its partners in this proposed alliance and would like to remind its author, composer and music publisher members that it is committed to securing fair compensation for them, at the best possible cost, whenever the right to reproduce their works is exercised worldwide, regardless of the platform used.

SODRAC is a collective management society that specializes in copyright clearance for reproduction of musical works of authors, composers and music publishers (since 1985) and for works of art and crafts (since 1997). SODRAC distributes the royalties it collects among its 6,000 members in Canada, as well as among the foreign companies and rights holders it represents in Canada.