
By Jeff King
Companies, like people, build trust over years, sometimes decades. And then shockingly, often over a suspect decision, the trust is obliterated in seconds.
Let’s look at Volkswagen. Generally a solid reputation for well-engineered vehicles that had reasonable quality and competitive prices. Add in a virtual lock on the diesel market in North America. Sales were growing, with a strong core fan base and decent conquest sales.
Then September 2015 hit like a ton of bricks. Months of investigations and probes during the first half of 2015 generated little more than rumours and the occasional raised eyebrow in the technical press. Then, wham! VW acknowledged that it had built and installed software to game the emissions testing system.
The diesel world for VW in North America has now changed dramatically, and it’ll likely take decades to truly recover. The damage to the rest of the car line will not be insignificant. The trust has been challenged, eroded, weakened.
So why write about this in a blog about music and music rights? Because SOCAN has a special relationship with our members and licensees that’s built on a number of things, but most importantly trust. We’re trusted to license music uses and distribute royalties in a fair, equitable and transparent manner. We have a duty to manage the assets of the organization in a prudent manner.
These duties and obligations are taken very seriously by SOCAN. You deserve nothing less.