Tariff 22 not all that bad for the hobbyist podcaster

I’ve seen a lot of news lately about Tariff No. 22. One of the things mentioned is that amateur podcasters can license SOCAN content for $60 per year if they have no revenue and fill their air with no more than 20% of it. I couldn’t find that in the Canadian Gazette I was looking at (linked to by Sara Bannerman) but a reliable source says so.

When I first read about it I was immediately wary that they’d try to collect from all podcaster hosting sites in Canada. It reminded me of the proposed internet levy from way back. I wasn’t the only one, the first commenter in Michael Geist’s post guessed the same. Dr. Geist quickly corrected that assumption in the second comment.

Podcasters only need to pay this fee if they want to play anything from SOCAN’s repertoire.

The fee would give podcasters the permission to play SOCAN licensed music. That doesn’t cover any sort of reproduction though, so if you want to mail out burnt CDs give CMRRA a call. The fees will add up.

If you want to skip the hassle there’s always podsafe music.