Shortly after being contacted by John Harris Stevenson with details of the Copyright Board’s Tariff 22 hearings, I discovered that Michael Geist has blogged about SOCAN’s proposed $60 annual fee for podcasters whose music programming accounts for 20% or less of their podcast.

If I understand that correctly, podcasters would pay an annual fee of $60 to obtain performance rights to include any amount of music in their podcast provided the music programming does not exceed 20% of the program content. Before you get too excited, remember that this proposal only applies to the rights which SOCAN can license… performance rights. Podcasters will still need to obtain reproduction rights.

I will be meeting with John Harris Stevenson later this week to discuss the hearings. John is representing community and campus radio at the hearings and has suggested that the podcast community may want to present a formal case to the Board.

Stay tuned.