The Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) is a Canadian performance rights organization that represents the performing rights of more than 135,000 songwriters, composers and music publishers. The organization collects licence fees through a music licensing program approved by the Copyright Board of Canada.
SOCAN is a result of a merger that took place in 1990 between the Composers, Authors and Publishers Association of Canada (CAPAC) and the Performing Rights Organization of Canada (PROCAN).
In May 2016, SOCAN acquired the Seattle-based company Medianet Digital for an undisclosed amount; the organization planned to leverage the company’s software and database of rights metadata to assist in the calculation and distribution of royalties for works on digital music streaming services. In July 2016, SOCAN acquired Audiam, a U.S. startup created by TuneCore founder Jeff Price that specializes in managing the distribution of royalties for songs used on digital services such as YouTube, using a database of song recordings and metadata for identification.