{"id":12838,"date":"2026-08-06T10:46:50","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T10:46:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/interspacemusic.com\/blog\/canada-killed-5-percent-streaming-levy-songwriters-record-year\/"},"modified":"2026-08-06T10:49:20","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T10:49:20","slug":"canada-killed-5-percent-streaming-levy-songwriters-record-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/interspacemusic.com\/blog\/canada-killed-5-percent-streaming-levy-songwriters-record-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada Killed Its 5% Streaming Levy Before It Paid Out a Cent. Its Songwriters Just Had a Record Year Anyway."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On 17 July 2026, Canada&#8217;s Department of Justice sent a letter to the Federal Court of Appeal confirming that Ottawa will eliminate the base contribution requirement on streaming services and replace it with government funding.<\/p>\n<p>Law professor Michael Geist, who published the filing, read it plainly: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.michaelgeist.ca\/2026\/07\/starting-over-court-filing-confirms-the-crtcs-streamer-contribution-decisions-are-dead-with-a-full-online-streaming-act-reset-to-come\/\">the CRTC&#8217;s streamer contribution decisions are dead<\/a>, and a full Online Streaming Act reset is coming.<\/p>\n<p>Two years of argument over who pays for Canadian music ended in a paragraph of court correspondence.<\/p>\n<h2>What the levy actually was<\/h2>\n<p>CRTC means the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, the federal regulator that implemented the Online Streaming Act.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In 2024 the CRTC ordered qualifying foreign streaming services to pay 5% of their annual Canadian revenues into Canadian content funds.<\/li>\n<li>Payments were stayed in December 2024 pending appeals. Not one dollar reached a fund.<\/li>\n<li>Music Canada <a href=\"https:\/\/musiccanada.com\/news\/music-canada-applies-to-intervene-in-appeal-of-crtcs-base-contribution-decision\/\">applied to intervene in the appeal<\/a> in April 2025, arguing the CRTC recognised none of the investments streaming services already make in Canada, and that 30% of contributions would fund commercial radio news rather than music.<\/li>\n<li>Per Geist&#8217;s reading of the July filing, both the 5% base rate and the proposed 15% increased rate are gone.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>What replaces it<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Canadian Identity and Culture Minister Marc Miller announced 600 million dollars in federal cultural funding across the audio and audiovisual sectors, <a href=\"https:\/\/ca.news.yahoo.com\/ottawa-scrap-contribution-requirement-large-184322473.html\">per The Canadian Press<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Industry groups had valued the contribution regime at roughly 200 million dollars a year.<\/li>\n<li>Ottawa has signalled future rates closer to international norms, around 4%, with more flexibility on how they are met.<\/li>\n<li>The Online Streaming Act itself stays. The CRTC now has to unwind its decisions and open new proceedings, a process measured in years.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Not everyone reads it as a win. Tania Kontoyanni, president of l&#8217;Union des artistes, told CP the decision was &#8220;catastrophic&#8221; and &#8220;the worst news of the year.&#8221;<\/p>\n<h2>Where Canadian music money actually came from in 2025<\/h2>\n<p>While the levy sat frozen, the existing rails paid out.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>SOCAN, the Canadian performing rights and reproduction society, <a href=\"https:\/\/musically.com\/2026\/04\/09\/socan-reveals-its-collections-hit-a-record-587m-in-2025\/\">collected a record 587.1 million dollars in 2025<\/a>, up 5%, and distributed 512 million dollars to songwriters, composers and publishers.<\/li>\n<li>Domestic revenue reached 445.5 million dollars, led by 232.8 million from digital services, up 11.5% year on year.<\/li>\n<li>International collections came to 141.7 million dollars. SOCAN also warned that generative AI is placing mounting pressure on creator livelihoods.<\/li>\n<li>Budget 2025 renewed the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.canada.ca\/en\/canadian-heritage\/services\/funding\/music-fund.html\">Canada Music Fund<\/a> with 48 million dollars over three years from 2026-27, delivered through FACTOR anglophone-side and Musicaction francophone-side.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>None of that is the levy. All of it is money a working artist can register for or apply to today.<\/p>\n<h2>The practical read for indie Canadian artists and labels<\/h2>\n<p>We reported in July that <a href=\"https:\/\/interspacemusic.com\/blog\/canada-is-the-worlds-9th-biggest-music-market-92-of-its-artists-spotify-money-comes-from-abroad\/\">92% of Canadian artists&#8217; Spotify earnings arrive from outside Canada<\/a>. A domestic levy on Canadian platform revenue was never going to move that number much.<\/p>\n<h3>Three things worth doing before Q4<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Register every composition with SOCAN and every master with Re:Sound. Unregistered works are the most common reason Canadian royalties sit undistributed, and the rights map just got more concentrated after <a href=\"https:\/\/interspacemusic.com\/blog\/soundexchange-sells-cmrra-to-socan-consolidating-canadian-music-rights\/\">SOCAN acquired CMRRA from SoundExchange<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Diarise FACTOR and Musicaction deadlines. FACTOR support reaches 67,500 dollars per album and 25,000 dollars per single or EP, with separate live performance streams.<\/li>\n<li>Audit metadata first. Grant panels and CMO claims fail on the same three things: inconsistent artist names, missing ISRCs, and unsigned split sheets.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Why the distribution rail matters more now<\/h2>\n<p>If a domestic levy was ever going to be the floor under Canadian streaming income, that floor is gone for at least a full CRTC proceeding cycle. What remains is export income and the accuracy of the delivery that carries it.<\/p>\n<p>DDEX means Digital Data Exchange, the metadata standard DSPs use to ingest releases and report back on them. Clean DDEX delivery is the difference between an export stream that pays the right rightsholder and one that lands in an unmatched pool.<\/p>\n<p>InterSpace Distribution delivers DDEX-native to the DSPs where that 92% accrues, with per-collaborator splits visible in the artist royalty dashboard. For Canadian labels, ToneGrid runs the same delivery white-labelled, with KYC and anti-fraud screening built in.<\/p>\n<p>The policy fight will restart. The catalogue paperwork does not have to wait for it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ottawa confirmed in July 2026 that Canada&#8217;s 5% streaming levy is dead, replaced by federal cultural funding. Here is what the CRTC reversal changes for indie Canadian artists and labels, what SOCAN&#8217;s record 587.1 million dollar year actually paid out, and where the money really arrives.","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12840,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"csco_display_header_overlay":false,"csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_page_load_nextpost":"","csco_post_video_location":[],"csco_post_video_location_hash":"","csco_post_video_url":"","csco_post_video_bg_start_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_end_time":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[518],"tags":[1407,23790,24,341,6756,112],"class_list":["post-12838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-policy-legal","tag-canada","tag-crtc","tag-music","tag-royalties","tag-socan","tag-spotify","cs-entry","cs-video-wrap"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Canada Killed Its 5% Streaming Levy Before It Paid Out a Cent. 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