Oh, Canada: Music Publishers Target the CBC Over its Streaming Music Site

Head over to CBC Music and you’ll find a streaming music site run by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. Canadian media companies aren’t happy about the on-demand, Web-based service and are taking steps to block the country’s national broadcaster from providing the tunes for free.

At issue is the lower royalty rates the CBC — as a public broadcaster — pays for the music compared to what private companies pay.

Via the Globe and Mail:

The companies argue they must charge customers to offset royalty costs which are triggered every time a song is played, while the CBC gets around the pay-per-click problem because it is considered a non-profit corporation.

They want Ottawa to intervene and they’ve offered Federal Heritage Minister James Moore some alternatives: Shut the site down, force it to play only Canadian music, or insist that it charge for access in the same way private broadcasters do.

“The only music that you can hear for free is when the birds sing,” Eric Boyko, CEO of Stingray, a company that has a subscription-based music app on the market, tells the Globe and Mail.

Let’s hope that remains true. In February, a YouTube user had his videos removed for violating a copyright claim by Rumblefish, a music licensing company. The offending audio: birds chirping in the background as the video creator walked about outside.