Cue Sheet Palooza Hackathon in Toronto will Create New Solutions for Screen Based Music Royalties

TORONTO - PrZen -- TORONTO -- The Screen Composers Guild of Canada and SOCAN have partnered with the Canada Council for the Arts, Songwriters Association of Canada, the Société professionelle des auteurs et des compositeurs du Québec, the SOCAN Foundation, Music Publishers Canada, the Canadian Guild of Music Supervisors, and Devpost to host the Cue-Sheet-Palooza Hackathon. The Hackathon will be held in-person on February 26-27, 2022 in Toronto. This one-of-a-kind event will provide software developers and designers, along with music and tech-industry mentors, the opportunity to showcase their creativity and innovation and not only rethink, but redefine the entirety of the cue sheet process. In the music sphere, cue sheets are lengthy documents that identify all of the music and its stakeholders in a particular production in order to accurately distribute royalties; this process has proved to be both tedious, and outdated. The Cue-Sheet-Palooza Hackathon will offer a unique opportunity to revolutionize the process of paying royalties to music stakeholders.

John Welsman, President of the Screen Composers Guild of Canada noted, "Cue Sheets are the means by which music creators register their musical works in audio visual productions. They contain all of the information necessary to track and pay out performing and reproduction rights royalties to composers, songwriters and music publishers… these royalties provide financial stability to the often unpredictable livelihoods of music creators, allowing them to keep doing what they do so well – creating music!"

"We're only just beginning to realize the potential of technology to allow music creators to receive what they have rightfully earned from their work," says SOCAN CEO Jennifer Brown. "This hackathon is an opportunity to bring speed and accuracy to what traditionally has been an extremely complicated process, and SOCAN is excited to see the results."

Developer teams will utilize sponsor APIs or SDKs in combination with other technology to create a more efficient and user-friendly payment process for music professionals. Musiio, AI for the music industry, and Jaxsta, the world's largest public-facing, dedicated database of official music credits, are joining as some of our early technology partners. SOCAN is also taking the opportunity to premiere and showcase its much anticipated Cue Sheet API, billed as a game changer for music creators and stakeholders.

The event will be judged by a roster of esteemed industry veterans, including award-winning Canadian composer Amin Bhatia; VP of CONNECT Music Licensing Catherine Jones; Executive Director of the SOCAN Foundation Charlie Wall-Andrews; ​​ Senior Manager of Broadcast Operations (Audio) at BellMedia Michael Nunan; and Mohamed Moutadayne, CTO & SVP of Product & Services at LyricFind.

Participants of the Hackathon will have the opportunity to work with experienced industry mentors, including technologist/media and entertainment industry professional Mathew Sherman, a 29 year veteran of BellMedia; composer/software developer Toby Sherriff; University of Toronto Adjunct Professor, Music Technology & Digital Media Program, Catherine Moore; Songwriter/Producer and Founder of MDIIO, Justin Gray; Chief Technology Officer, Slaight Music, Barnaby Marshall;  VP Strategy and Operations at MDIIO, Ryan Maule and Manager - Product Management, Member Digital Products at SOCAN, Tobi Akinwumi.

Teams will compete for cash prizes, and the winning team will also receive registrations for Canadian Music Week 2022, which is happening in April of 2022.

Interested hackers can sign up to participate here.

Want to sponsor or partner on Cue Sheet Palooza?  Contact us (https://screencomposers.ca/cuesheethackathon/).