Canadian organisation SOCAN have made another purchase that positions them in the prime spot to help artists fairly receive what they’re owed from music online.

SOCAN’s latest purchase is royalty collecting society Audiam, founded by Tunecore executives. Audiam scans music from around the web, including music services like YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play, and many more to identify and collect the appropriate royalties for artists.

Audiam will remain a separate body with Tunecore founder and CEO Jeff Price retaining his position as CEO at Audiam. Performing rights association SOCAN’s purchase of Audiam follows another purchase by the company in May this year of metadata tech providers MediaNet, which gives them access to an expansive list of information about digital sound recordings allowing them to match tracks and issue licenses so that rights-holders can get paid.

SOCAN’s CEO Eric Baptiste said: “In 2013 Audiam shook up the music royalties system by identifying and correcting serious gaps in the digital music rights value chain, particularly with music used in YouTube videos, by correctly matching data to the rights-holder. By acquiring Audiam, SOCAN steps even further ahead with our vision to lead the global transformation of music rights with substantial new tools for our more than 135,000 member songwriters, composers and music publishers, dramatically expanding our ability to ensure that creators are properly and fairly compensated.”

SOCON digital copyright artists

SOCAN say that with the purchase of Audiam they will begin leveraging it’s software in music identification and it’s other services to more accurately pay rightsholders their entitled earnings. They also plan to expand with Audiam’s other business areas like it’s licensing and administration of mechanical income from digital service in North America.

Jeff Price said: “SOCAN is not only the most technologically advanced, efficient and transparent music rights organisation on the planet, but its board of directors and executive team are singularly focussed on assuring all the works of composers and publishers are licensed and that rights-holders are paid for the use of their music. Adding SOCAN’s resources and knowledge to Audiam allows us to finally fix the global industry problems, remove liability for services and get rights-holders paid.”