Toronto Songwriting School presents How SOCAN Gets You Paid through our Business of Music Series on Monday, September 21, 2020 at 7pm ET.

What is SOCAN?

SOCAN (the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada) is Canada’s largest rights management organization. Their membership includes over 150,000 songwriters, composers, music publishers and visual artists, and over 100,000 organizations across Canada are licensed to play music.

SOCAN serves and champions music creators, music publishers, and visual artists. They advocate for them and work to defend and protect their rights, so that these artists can be compensated for their hard work. Through direct affiliations and reciprocal agreements, they also license the performance and reproduction of musical works and collect and distribute royalties in Canada and throughout the globe.

Our Special Guest: Racquel Villagante 

As the A&R Representative from SOCAN Vancouver now based in SOCAN Toronto, Racquel Villagante has spent the last 2.5 years recruiting emerging Canadian talent to SOCAN, connecting creatives, hosting songwriting camps, and helping music creators at all stages in their careers achieve success in this ever-changing, ever-challenging music industry. Previous to working at SOCAN, Racquel worked as an artist manager, as a TA and instructor at Nimbus School of Recording & Media, and as a label manager for Nimbus’ in-house record label, Business Class Records, where she was responsible for signing artists & bands, project managing commercial releases, and building mutually beneficial partnerships with media & sponsors. Racquel had also been a frequent reviewer & contributor to the go-to online blog for talent discovery in Vancouver’s music scene, HipHopVancouver (HHV). In February 2020, Racquel co-founded and co-hosted “Womxn Rising”, a 2-day conference supporting the career development of up-and-coming female-identified, trans, non-binary, and 2-spirit artists and providing touchpoints for mentorship from female-identified, BIPOC industry professionals. Racquel’s true passions are in supporting emerging talent from underrepresented BIPOC communities, and building meaningful bridges between artists and between artists and industry.