Over the past few days, the CRTC has been holding a hearing to determine whether the modern Canadian music landscape is still set up to ensure that Canadian artists receive a fair shake on home turf.
On its nose, the hearing is looking into whether or not CanCon rules are helping with music discovery on streaming services. However, it’s also diving deeper and exploring the idea of creating a Canadian music fund that all the prominent streamers will pay into to help support the Canadian arts. This is similar to newly set up funds to help fund the Canadian news and TV spaces.
The CRTC is biting off a lot with this hearing. It’s also taking presentations and asking questions about modern music data collection and how AI might impact the music industry, from distribution to creation.
So far, over 30 presentations have been given by expected Canadian players like Rogers, Cogeco, CBC, and Music Canada. However, major tech players like Apple, Amazon, and Spotify have also appeared. Finally, there have been many speeches from small and mid-sized players like Durham Radio, the Indigenous Music Office, and others. You can find all the presentations posted on the CRTC Hearing Twitter account.
This hearing has seemed to be a bit of a mess from the outside looking in, since it’s tackling both online music streaming and radio, so the breadth of questions and presentations has been fairly wide. Tech companies are arguing that they already do a lot to promote Canadian content to Canadians. Rogers is using this time to push for new rules about moving AM radio stations to FM, and smaller players like Torres Media used its time to argue for less paperwork for small radio stations among other things.
Throughout all that noise, there are still some interesting points that have been raised about the modern music landscape in Canada.
For instance, something that came up more than once was the fact that radio stations need to play a specific amount of Canadian songs, but the online streamers don’t, and there feels like that makes it harder for radio to compete. A presentation from Stingray Media even mentions that forcing the media to play CanCon, which can result in the same songs being played a lot, can even push people away from radio and onto the streamers.
Another issue brought up more than once was the possibility of reclassifying CanCon music. Right now, a song needs to have been composed, written and performed by a Canadian, but that still excludes a lot of music by Canadian artists. For instance, there are very often multiple people who work on chart-topping pop songs, meaning it’s very unlikely to have those songs apply for CanCon.
The Digital Media Association (DIMA)’s presentation claims that streaming is very important and saved the Canadian music industry from piracy. However, it is also worth mentioning that MobileSyrup talked with a few Canadian indie artists this year, and none of them were very satisfied with how streaming revenue worked.
There are still a few days of presentations left since the CRTC is expecting 50 by the end of this consultation process. Overall, from some of the questions the CRTC has been asking it seems likely there will be some changes to CanCon music requirements, but it remains to be seen what other changes will be implemented, and it will likely take a while after the presentations are finished to see any real results.
Source: CRTC
