Music: October 2007 Archives

Tax Legal Downloads to Pay for Illegal Ones?

By Kee Hinckley on October 19, 2007 4:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Punish the good guys (and retroactively screw the companies as well). Sounds like a great idea!

Canada to tax legal digital music downloads Electronista

Canadians may soon pay a small tax on every legal music store download, says a new measure (PDF) sanctioned by the Copyright Board of Canada. Requested by the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN), the tax would apply at least 2.1 cents to every individual song download and 1.5 cents per track for complete albums. Subscription download and streaming services would themselves be charged between 5.7 and 6.8 percent of a user's monthly fees. Minimum fees would also apply for every larger download or subscription.

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The new tax would be retroactive to January 1st, 1996 and would effectively cover all sales and subscriptions from such services since their beginnings, which typically followed shortly after those in the US.

What I find hugely ironic here, is that it's now virtually guaranteed that you could determine exactly who should get the money for each of these schemes. After all, iTunes knows what artists music was sold. But is the tax money going to go to them? Nope. Goes to the record companies. So perfectly good, professional artists (like Harvey Reid, whose music has been the default background for iPhone slide shows for years (Bach's Minuet in G)) won't get any money at all from any of these taxes. Why? He doesn't belong to any of the so-called "artist" associations.

See Harvey's articles on the subject, including: