The Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers (SOCAN) is divesting itself of its activities in the visual arts sector. It transfers its catalog of works to Copyright in Visual Arts (COVA-DAAV), which thus becomes the only collective management company in copyright in the country in the middle.
SOCAN represented more than 40,000 creators and rights holders in the visual arts and crafts since 2018, when it swallowed its rival, the Society for the Reproduction Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers in Canada (SODRAC).
However, it has just announced that it will end its services offered to artisans and visual artists on January 30th. The latter will be asked to join COVA-DAAV, whose activities are concentrated in this sector, unlike SOCAN. COVA-DAAV therefore becomes the only collective management society in copyright in the visual arts, which will facilitate “access to licensing support for visual artists, their estates and other rights holders” , we wanted to put forward Thursday.
The Regroupement des artistes en arts visuels du Québec (RAAV), which supports COVA-DAAV, welcomed the news with enthusiasm. “We are delighted with this news and look forward to welcoming member artists and rights holders from Quebec and Canada to COVA-DAAV and to continuing to provide them with the exceptional service to which they are accustomed”, indicated by way of of press release David Farsi, the president of the RAAV.
SOCAN, for its part, explained that it was ceding its activities in the visual arts and crafts in order to refocus on its primary mission, that is to say the collective management of copyright in music. This is not the first time that she has expressed this intention. SOCAN also said it wanted to focus on the music business when it drew a line in 2020 on its Dataclef division, a database it thought to sell abroad in order to garner new revenue.
In the end, Dataclef did not have the expected success and SOCAN estimates that it lost $53 million in this project.
To see in video