Bryan Adams has taken a stand against the Online Streaming Act (Bill C-11), decrying the new Canadian government regulations as making it "harder for new artists to break through and share music on a global scale."
The Kingston, ON-born iconic soft rocker took to Instagram today to share a video on the subject, including a direct call-out to Canadian Minister of Heritage Pascale St. Onge for failing to consult with artists on the bill, despite the public commitment St. Onge made in a comment on another video Adams posted about the Online Streaming Act back in May.
"A while back, the Minister of Heritage said she wanted to engage with Canadian artists about this new tax. Well, that never happened," Adams claimed, adding that the new "streaming tax" would cost Canadians more to be able to listen to the music that they love.
Earlier this month, Spotify reportedly increased its prices across the board in Canada following a similar move in the US market over the summer (and a hike in premium subscription rates last year). The streaming giant previously warned that Bill C-11 would force a nationwide price increase, as foreign streaming services will now have to use five percent of their Canadian revenues to support a government CanCon fund.
"And as of September, the government has slipped this new tax through," the singer-songwriter continued. "Wanna know where your tax dollars are going? I'll tell you. It's going to prop up outdated broadcast models such as CanCon which were originally built to help Canadian creators. And CanCon needs to change, not to be propped up. The way it's set up now, if a Canadian artist wants to work with a non-Canadian, then their work is no longer recognized as Canadian. And therefore radio stations are less likely to play it in Canada."
Adams concluded, "These rules just make it harder for new artists to break through and share music on a global scale. Canadians deserve better."
We've been hearing about Bill C-11, which updates the federal Broadcasting Act with an "online company category," for years now. After a January 2020 report found that streaming services should invest in Canadian programming, Bill C-11 was passed through the Canadian House of Commons in June 2022, mandating that US-based and other foreign companies would be forced to hand over five percent of their revenues in the Canadian market to support CanCon programming.
It was at this point that the legislation drew more widespread attention to what exactly counts as CanCon, as designated by the 1971 adoption of the MAPL system — which Adams spoke out against in the early '90s when the CRTC decided that "Everything I Do (I Do It for You)" didn't count. To qualify, songs must meet two of the following criteria: being written entirely by a Canadian; performed principally by a Canadian; being broadcast or performed live in Canada; or having lyrics written entirely by a Canadian.
Hopefully at this point it's common knowledge enough that streaming services like Spotify quite famously have extremely measly royalty payouts for songwriters, with the Swedish company helmed by Daniel Ek planning on using the increase in US subscription rates (accompanied by an extra 15 hours of audiobook content for users) to pay artists a discounted "bundle" rate due to having to license both music and books. Songwriters and publishers will earn an estimated $150 million USD less within the first twelve months of these changes being implemented.
Like Adams, a new website by the Digital Music Association (DiMA), Scrap the Streaming Tax, is calling on Canadians to write to their MPs and demand the repeal of the five percent levy being imposed on foreign-based streaming companies in order to operate in Canada. DiMA's angle is more from the consumer perspective than Adams's viewpoint as an artist, and is likewise more focused on the subscription rate increases amid life in Canada already being unaffordable.
Watch Adams's video below. It's worth noting that his outspokenness — which included blasting the Canadian Armed Forces back in the spring for continuing to use bearskin caps — also once involved publicly blaming the spread of COVID-19 on "bat eating, wet market animal selling, virus making greedy bastards." (The musician did apologize afterward, writing, "No excuse, I just wanted to have a rant about the horrible animal cruelty in these wet-markets being the possible source of the virus, and promote veganism.")