A SOCAN license gives businesses the freedom and flexibility to use virtually any music they want in their business or at their public event – legally, ethically, and easily. SOCAN makes this process simple by allowing music users to pay a relatively small fee, often once a year, which is distributed to music creators in Canada and around the world through our reciprocal agreements with similar societies. The fees are distributed to our Members who are composers, authors, and publishers of music, according to distribution rules approved by our Board of Directors. By law, permission to publicly perform music in business is not automatically granted when you purchase CDs, mp3s, subscribe to online music services, stream music, etc. – doing this only allows you to use the music for private (non-commercial) purposes. Similarly, when you hire musicians to play music in your establishment or at a public event, the fees paid to them are for their performance, not to compensate the authors and publishers of the songs they perform.