Guess I'll have to burn my membership card, too.

In what would appear to be a concerted attempt by me to sever all ties with the established Canadian music industry, I’ve decided to not renew my membership in the Songwriters Association of Canada. It’s nothing personal, it just wasn’t working out for me. I tried it for a year & I just wasn’t getting my money’s worth out of it.

I think my biggest bone of contention was the fact that to lure you in they offer you membership in an exclusive online community of your peers which sounds like it should be a Shangri-La for aspiring writers like myself but in reality is a thoroughly under-utilized forum that goes days without any new content. And you have to pay for it up front before you can see any of the content at all. I took a leap of faith and ended up taking a tumble to say the least.

There’s also a free subscription to Songwriters Magazine in the package as well, but it really wasn’t my cup of tea. It seems to me that the editorial staff is totally in collusion with organizations like the RIAA and there’s little positive said about all the bold new possibilities the internet has to offer.

They feature articles suggesting Creative Commons is a gateway to signing away all your rights as a writer, and the last issue I saw featured extremely lop-sided coverage of the court case against the founders of the Pirate Bay. They trumpeted the ruling against them but failed to mention that the judge was a major shareholder in several companies with a vested interest in shutting them down. It’s almost like there’s no possible upside to file-sharing, and such narrow-mindedness really rubs me the wrong way.

Plus, it only comes around on a quarterly basis, is a little too skinny for my liking, and celebrates all the CanCon staples with no mention of anyone who might be doing things against the grain. And seriously, if I see another article in praise of Dan Hill I’m going to scream.

The only upside to membership was the meetings they had, like Date with a Demo and the like, but they weren’t free and they weren’t exactly convenient to folks like me living outside the major urban cores.

Add to that my suspicions that my membership fees were also going to lobbyists trying to get legislation passed that I probably don’t support and you can probably see why I decided to call it quits.

So what about you, dear readers? Any similar experiences you’d like to share? Any of the faithful care to take a shot at wooing me back into the fold? Leave a comment. I’d love to hear your take on all of this.