2022: the year of Artisti’s  25th anniversary!

A silver wedding anniversary between the collective management society and thousands of performers. This year will therefore be an amazing opportunity to highlight Artisti’s successes, because there have been many of them over the past 25 years!

1997: Artisti’s beginnings are interesting. Did you know that at the time, its creation was possible in part thanks to the support of comedians and actors members of the Union des Artistes (UDA)? They already envisioned the importance of copyrights for performers and seized the opportunity to advocate for their granting and to, afterwhile, create a collecting society to administer them.

Following a real crusade led by the UDA and other Canadian associations of performers and producers, these rights were introduced into the Copyright Act by the federal government. Soon after, Artisti was born…

Through their union dues, comedians and actors have mainly financed the establishment of our collective management society in order to support the cause and ensure the sustainability of the rights of singers and musicians, who were the first beneficiaries of the benefits of the new rights granted to performers. That said, at the same time, the comedians and actors saw a way to also protect their so-called residuals in the future – even if not a foreseeable one for the time being. If the collective management of residuals is still to be seen, in the meantime, the efforts invested for performers in the music sector have bear fruit, because on June 10, 1997, Artisti began its existence after an investment of more than one million both in dollar amounts and hours of meetings, phone calls, recruiting efforts, etc.

2022: the results are convincing and, from the very first years, they have been beneficial for Quebec performers as well as performers around the world,. Artisti, full of goodwill and ambitions, has risen rapidly through the ranks, the figures of the last 25 years clearly showing this. The value, relevance and work of Artisti are unequivocal:

• more than 6335 members;
• nearly $83 million in royalties distributed to date;
• the obtention of the full range of copyrights for the performers of the sound recording sector, after constant advocacy efforts with the federal government authorities,;
• international agreements with 39 foreign sister societies covering 48 countries of collection;
• Completely free of charge collection of foreign royalties from 21 societies based 19 different countries (including France, Germany, Belgium and Italy);
• unique tariffs and agreements in Canada for the collection of royalties in relation to the incidental reproduction of performers’ performances;
• the possibility for the artists it represents to entrust it with all of their exclusive rights;
• a database developed for it and adopted by other Canadian collective societies;
• membership to SCAPR (the association bringing together performers’ societies of many countries);
• participation in global databases such as the International Performer Database (IPD) and the Virtual Repertoire DataBase (VRDB);
• active involvement in MétaMusique, the metadata indexing tool created in Quebec;
• a biannual Gala during which prizes accompanied by a grant are awarded by Artisti, since 2017;
• the granting of prizes awarded at the Festival International de la Chanson de Granby and the GAMIQ since many years.