From: Reuters –

Canadian broadcasters, online radio stations, electronic gaming Web sites and other Internet services that use copyrighted music must now pay royalties to the owners of those tunes. New royalty regulations, imposed by the Copyright Board of Canada, came into effect yesterday.

The new regulations do not affect personal blogs, MySpace / YouTube posts, or background music Webcasts piped into hotels and restaurants.

As Reuters reports, “The tariff decision was prompted by the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN), a performance-rights group, which has long called for music royalties for Internet-base distribution and delivery of music product for which artists hold a copyright.”