Part 6 · Security, compliance and privacy

Music licensing

Track the royalties owed to SOCAN and Re:Sound for music played on your premises, with the proposed tariff, the certified tariff and the adjustment.

Symbifox 18.0 (September 2026 catalogue) · Modules: Licences musicales : conformité en établissement · Revised 2026-10-18

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Playing music on your premises in Canada gives rise to royalties. The Music licensing application keeps a file for each venue: the period paid, the proof of payment and, above all, what can still be revised. It is meant for the person who handles the obligations of a business or a firm, and for the consulting firm that follows this file for its clients. The result is an amount calculated year by year, with the share paid under tariffs the Copyright Board of Canada has not yet certified.

This module is published but absent from the Boréal demo: this chapter describes it from its documentation and its declared screens, without screenshots (module published, not illustrated).

Overview#

Four concepts are enough. The establishment is the place where music plays: its floor area, its uses and its operating days form the royalty basis. The licence period is a paid stretch of time, with its renewal due date, its settlement date and its payment reference. The royalty line applies a tariff to a period and shows, alongside it, what was actually paid. The tariff register is the reference table: one line per collective society, per tariff, per use and per period.

Two facts govern everything else. First, there is no longer a separate counter for each society. SOCAN collects for authors, composers and publishers; Re:Sound (Ré:Sonne on screen) collects for performers and producers. Since 2019, they issue both licences in a single transaction, so the module tracks one licensing relationship, not two. Second, background music tariffs are pending before the Copyright Board. A business pays today under a proposed tariff, which the Board may certify years later, with retroactive effect.

Hence the module's design rule: a period carries a single tariff line, which knows both the proposed rate and the certified rate. A register that kept only the rate in force could never say how much the bill has moved.

Four amounts follow from this rule, on each line, then added up for the period and the establishment.

The third drops to zero the day the Board rules, and the fourth takes over. An amount is never in both at once.

Configuration#

Access and permissions#

The Manager group implies the User group. An internal user who belongs to neither sees neither the menu nor the files: access is granted, never assumed. The three main screens also respect separation by company.

Settings#

The module adds no setting to the general settings. Only one behaviour can be adjusted, the daily due-date reminder. It ships turned off, and you turn it on deliberately from the list of scheduled actions. Waking it up on a new database would create activities on files that no one has reviewed yet.

Base data#

The tariff register is seeded at installation, from the texts published by the Copyright Board. It covers SOCAN Tariff 15.A for background music, SOCAN Tariff 15.B for music on hold, and Re:Sound Tariff 3.B for both uses. Each line holds the address of the document its rate comes from. A checkbox says whether the rate was read from the text or only assumed.

Review this table before the first file, then create your establishments. One precaution: a rate retyped by hand on a seeded line is overwritten at the next module update, because these lines are reference data, not data entry.

Getting started#

This walkthrough opens the file for a venue and calculates its exposure since 2020. It assumes the Manager right.

1. Open Music licensing › Establishments, then select New.
2. Enter the Name of the venue and choose the Client.
3. Enter the Area and choose the Unit, “m²” or “ft²”.
4. Check the uses, Background music and Music on hold, and enter the number of Phone lines.
5. Enter the Operating days per year, and check Seasonal establishment if the venue opens less than six months a year.
6. Choose the Music source and enter the Entandem account if there is one.
7. Save, then select Assess exposure.

Result: one licence period is created for each missing year since 2020, filled with the tariffs that apply to it. The totals appear on the form: the reference royalties, what remains revisable and the adjustment already recorded. The Licence periods tab gives the details, year by year.

Common tasks#

Create a licence period by hand#

Use this for a year the assessment did not cover, or for a period that does not follow the calendar year.

1. Open Music licensing › Licence periods, then select New.
2. Choose the Establishment.
3. Enter the Start and End of the period.
4. Enter the Renewal due date.
5. Select Load applicable tariffs.
6. Save.

Result: one line is added for each tariff that touches the period, according to the uses checked on the establishment, and the four amounts are calculated.

Record a payment and close a period#

The proof matters as much as the amount: it is filed next to it, not in an email inbox.

1. Open the period in Music licensing › Licence periods.
2. Enter the Paid amount on each tariff line.
3. Enter the Payment reference, that is, the receipt or invoice number.
4. Select Mark as settled.

Result: the settlement date is filled in, the status changes to “Settled” and the period leaves the list of upcoming due dates. Reopen brings it back if the file needs to be reworked.

Track what remains revisable#

This is the question a spreadsheet cannot ask: how much was paid under a tariff that nothing makes final.

1. Open Music licensing › Under uncertified tariff.
2. Group by establishment to see the breakdown.
3. Open a period to read, line by line, the amount at the proposed rate and what was paid.

Result: the list of periods whose tariff is still awaiting certification, with the amount that remains revisable for each. An empty list here is a good sign, not an error.

Mark a tariff as certified#

This action belongs to the manager of the tariff register, and is taken only after reading the certified text.

1. Open Music licensing › Configuration › Tariff register.
2. Select the line concerned.
3. Enter the Certified rate, the Certified base amount and the Certified minimum, then the Certification date.
4. Select Mark as certified.

Result: every period that carries this tariff is recalculated. The amount under an uncertified tariff drops to zero and the adjustment takes its place, up or down depending on the gap.

Add a line to the tariff register#

Add a line when a new block of tariffs is published and the module update has not brought it in yet.

1. Open Music licensing › Configuration › Tariff register, then select New.
2. Choose the Collective society and enter the Tariff, for example “15.A”, then its Title.
3. Choose the Intended use and enter the Period start and the Period end.
4. Choose the Basis, then enter the Proposed rate, the Proposed base amount and the Proposed minimum.
5. Enter the Source and check Rate verified at source if the rate comes from the text itself.
6. Save.

Result: the line joins the tariff register and will be picked up by the next periods it covers. The table refuses two versions of the same tariff for the same year.

Turn on due-date reminders#

Reminders arrive as activities, as elsewhere in Symbifox. They stay off until you turn them on.

1. First review the open periods and their due dates.
2. Open the list of scheduled actions in the technical settings.
3. Turn on the music licensing due-date reminder.

Result: every day, an activity is created for the managers for periods approaching their due date. All three tariff texts set payment no later than January 31 of the year covered.

Document the source of the music#

The source is not a detail: it changes the applicable tariff, and sometimes the compliance of the service used.

1. Open the establishment form.
2. Choose the Music source from the list.
3. Enter the Music source finding in one sentence.
4. Save.

Result: a consumer streaming service used in a business flags itself, since its terms of use do not cover playback in an establishment.

The menus, one by one#

This module is absent from the demo: the menus described here are the ones the module declares.

Music licensing › Establishments: the list of venues tracked, with their customer, floor area and totals. This is the working screen: you open a file here and run the exposure assessment. On an empty screen, the help text explains that an establishment is a place where music plays, and that its floor area and uses form the royalty basis.

Music licensing › Licence periods: all periods, across all establishments, with their renewal due date, status and amounts. Group by establishment or filter by status to prepare a renewal.

Music licensing › Under uncertified tariff: the same periods, limited to those whose tariff is awaiting certification. Its help text says so directly: what the client paid for these periods remains revisable until the Board rules.

Music licensing › Configuration: a grouping menu, visible only to managers.

Music licensing › Configuration › Tariff register: the reference table, one line per society, per tariff and per period, with the proposed rate and the certified rate side by side. Its help text notes that the gap between the two makes the retroactive adjustment.

Reference#

Fields of the Establishment form#

Fields of the Licence period form#

Fields of the royalty line form#

Fields of the Tariff form#

Reports and exports#

The application produces no printable report. Amounts are read on screen, and lists are exported as everywhere else in Symbifox, as described in Common actions in every application. For a client file, the establishment form is enough: it holds the totals and the year-by-year details.

Automations#

A daily reminder creates an activity for managers for periods coming due; it ships turned off. A period's status is calculated automatically and stored, from four values: Upcoming, Due soon, Overdue and Settled. The four amounts are recalculated whenever a rate, basis or payment changes. A certification updates them on every period concerned, with no re-entry. Finally, module updates refresh the tariff register: this is the normal path when the Board publishes.

Public pages and portal#

The module exposes no public page and does not appear in the client portal.

Modules that extend this application#

No satellite module extends Music licensing. The module relies on the messaging and activity features shared across Symbifox. Each change of rate, status and due date remains visible in the file's chatter, the message thread at the bottom of the form. Reminders arrive like any other activity.

Understanding#

Why a single line carries both rates. Two successive records, one proposed and one certified, would force you to find the earlier one to know how much the bill has moved. A single line carries both values, and the gap between them is exactly the adjustment owed.

Why a single licensing relationship. SOCAN and Re:Sound collect for two separate rights, but have issued their licences together since 2019. Tracking two files would duplicate due dates that come only once.

Why Re:Sound does not count like SOCAN. Its basis is the area open to the public multiplied by the number of operating days. That is why the establishment form asks for operating days, a figure no other tariff uses.

Why a base amount next to the rate. The music on hold tariff is worded “so much for the first line, so much for each additional line”. Multiplying the rate by the total number of lines would overcharge the first one. The base amount exists for this precise reason.

What the seasonal half rate changes. A venue operated less than six months a year gets half the rate, and the minimum applies after this reduction, never before.

How long nothing has been certified. The last certified amount for background music dates from the 2008-2011 block. The following blocks have all remained proposals, so an establishment has been paying under proposed tariffs for about fifteen years. The amount under an uncertified tariff makes this visible.

What is still missing. The Re:Sound 2027-2031 block is the only line in the tariff register without a rate, because no year before 2027 is affected. Re:Sound's two fallback methods, per seat and per admission, appear in the tariff text but are not calculated: only the floor-area basis is.

What the module is not. It does not give legal advice. Rates are dated data, each stating whether it was read from the tariff text or only assumed; a rate that was not read is not a promise.

Troubleshooting#

See also#

• Contacts: the customer an establishment is linked to.
• Purchase: the supplier invoice that proves payment.
• Invoicing: rebilling a file tracked for a client.
• Common actions in every application: filters, grouping, activities and exports.