SOCAN & SoundExchange Announce Agreement for SOCAN to Acquire CMRRA

SOCAN and SoundExchange announced today that they’ve entered into a purchase agreement under which SOCAN will acquire the Canadian Musical Reproduction Rights Agency, known as CMRRA, from SoundExchange. The deal is still subject to regulatory approval and other standard closing conditions before it’s finalized.

For anyone outside the rights administration world, it’s worth untangling exactly what’s changing hands here. SOCAN is Canada’s main performing rights organization, with more than a century of history collecting royalties for public performances of music, and it’s also spent close to a decade building out its own reproduction rights business. CMRRA, meanwhile, has specialized in reproduction rights specifically, the licensing that covers things like mechanical royalties, for more than 50 years. SoundExchange, the U.S.-based nonprofit that currently owns CMRRA, has held that agency for close to a decade after acquiring it itself.