Music is surrounding everyone in the world. It doesn't matter where you are, you will find music somehow. Where you find music, is up to you. You could purchase a CD, purchase an album online, or you can download a streaming service and download our songs offline with your paid subscription. The focus of this petition is on the latter. Here in Canada, streaming is considered the next best step to distributing your music, and everyone is getting in on the new trend. A lot of these people who are subscribing believe that they are supporting their favourite artists, bands, and other media just by downloading and listening to their music with these applications. What if I told you, that you are supporting us in the most minimal way possible? You are supporting us, but the margin is incredibly small. For a simple example, we will be using the most popular streaming service globally, Spotify. On Spotify in the US, the streaming rates were as low as 0.00408 cents per play in May of 2015. This means that in order to gain 1 single dollar, you would require 246 plays on Spotify at the time. With this in mind, this would mean you need 24,600 plays to gain $100, which is $1 more than working 9 hours in a full time minimum wage job in Ontario. Our streaming rate in Canada? $0.00001 cents, even lower than the United States Spotify rate. This means that we gain 10.2 cents per 1000 plays in Canada. (With the exception of CBC Music, which is 13.1 cents per 1000 plays, or $0.00013 per play). It is worth noting, however, that Spotify claims to pay internationally at a rate of $0.006 minimum, according to their website. (See "Wait, I thought Spotify paid per stream?"). If this is still true today, it is currently the only noteworthy candidate for our streaming rates that may be worth it as an artist in Canada. As an artist worldwide, however, I continue to find this unacceptable, and so should you. Why should I find these rates to be shocking? Well, in Canada, the mechanical royalty rate (the money songwriters earn when a song is reproduced in a mixed format) will pay 8.3 cents per copy (this means every CD I sell will make me this much money per copy). Even that alone will profit you SIGNIFICANTLY more than steaming services if the 30 million paying subscribers in March 2016 on Spotify globally, would simply purchase a copy of that song. Performance Royalty Rates (the money artists earn for their song being played or performed publicly) do include internet performance as part of the deal, however, each area of interest has a different going rate. Streaming happens to be one of the most popular, if not THE most popular very soon, way to find music and listen, but it is the lowest going rate of the group, in which this group includes Concerts, Radio, Satellite Radio, Television and Cable, Cinema, Ringtones, International rates, and Private Copying, alongside the low paying streaming rates. If the 30 million Spotify users happened to all switch to purchasing a CD of mine, rather than every single one listening to my song on Spotify (internationally) at least once, I would have made $249M dollars, rather than the Spotify pay check of $180K dollars. Why should I care so much if I am just one person? You may ask yourself. You are not the only one here that can help. There are 30 million others worldwide that would love to support some great talent out there, and we need your help more than ever. Not to mention, there is still the community at Apple Music, even Bandcamp, SoundCloud, or Google Play, You guys pay a certain amount of money per month and none of the artists you mean to support, are getting any true support. Artists are hard working individuals who want to put food on the table for our families, just like you. The music industry continues to decline in sales, but streaming is becoming more popular every second you read this page. So if you really think that you're alone on wanting to help, you are most certainly not alone. Help support artists everywhere, by signing this petition to get the attention of many music copyright and music management boards across Canada, and together, we can make a world of change to open the eyes of not only our government, but the eyes of other countries as well. Help us speak out, and we will bring you music to help keep your day brighter in return. Thank you for your time. Take the time to make this public, show this to anyone who loves music, and that anyone is everyone, because everyone loves music.