Click here to watch:

-What’s Wrong With Music?
-Avatars with Guitars: Music for Games
-Young Musicians Panel

and many many more…

The weekend was an awesome meeting of big brains from music recording, software, management, online sharing, blogging, podcasting, record labels, and musicians. David Byrne was there!

For reporting from all the talks we caught here at Indyish, check out our FMC coverage

Thanks go to John for links and heads up.

The first question in my interview is obvious, and he’s touching on it in our getting to know you chatter before I even start up my little recorder thing- how did Pop Montreal get started, both financially and conceptually?

It was touring with his brothers band, Stars, and then managing the Dears, that Dan Seligman made all kinds of crucial connections with bands, venues, managers, etc, and learned the music business from the ground up. The “ground” being that place where people hand out flyers and go see shows. According to Seligman AND Rusell Simmons in his co-authored autobiography “Life and Def”, this outside the building, ground up stuff is important. FYI young media moguls. Heads up.

So anyway, the mental map of international fests and bands was brewing in the man’s brain when he ended up on a train with Peter Rowan of Eric’s Trip, Julie Doiron and the Halifax Pop Explosion. Together they got the idea started- the two spoke about starting a fest like the one in Halifax, maybe they’d do it out in the country, eventually they talked about bringing the love right into Montreal. The growth of the fest from kernel to the thing we saw shake up much of our city this year was largely, it seems, a process of thinking of people they’d like to work with, and then going after them. Noelle Sorbara got back from China and Dan knew her from school, knew she was smart and had business sense and that she would be good to work with. So he asked her. From there they started work proposing relationships to sponsors. McAuslan and Greenland were the organizations that largely gave Pop it’s start, with media sponsors from the weeklies and free advertising from Exclaim!

I ask him what he learned from this year’s Pop Montreal, and apparently this is a good question. It’s always good to extract some lesson from your undertakings, I think, something specific for when the whole body of lived knowledge from in the moment gets blurry with the passing of time. And it’s better yet to do so on the web, where people can come at it and learn from it for themselves. That’s according to me, not Dan Seligman, but actually his answer to the question does cast the web in a nice way. He says he learned this year that it was hard to get the mainstream media’s attention if what you had were musicians from all around the world with interesting sounds and stories, living legends, in fact, but what you didn’t have was big catch-their-attention names like Franz Ferdinand. He makes some pretty disparaging remarks about the mainstream press, actually. The weeks right before the festival were spent laying out stories as simply and directly as possible, so that their shows could get attention. (I think actually, they may have gotten some advice in the way of press releases from the same person who helped me- Andi State, who also, in the corporate body of the agency she represents here, Encore Entertainment, sponsored Film Pop. She’s a helpful and savvy gal about town.)

From the sound of it, Pop fought for their coverage in a new way this year, and it increased his appreciation for the independent press. It really can be a democratizing thing, Seligman says. Bloggers went to all kinds of shows, not just the Toronto-trendy bands; told stories; knew what they were talking about in terms of musical reference and context in the way only deep geeks can and/or were able to unfold wordy long and ramblin reviews with opinions expressed on their own terms, without thought for editor or word count. Again- this is me expanding on Dan Seligman’s words. But I think I caught his gist. He does say he read a number of the blogs and enjoyed them, and it was certainly a conscious and cool move to let folks like us from blogs and websites have press passes so we could be there, covering shows.

It seems like POP at it’s core has an open palm, interested to work with interesting people, welcoming to folks who clamor to be aboard. When I ask a pack of curious questions about the listening sessions where bands do or don’t get accepted to the festival- out of the thousands who apply- his answer is “Do you want to come?” Yes. Yes I do. Thanks.

Apparently the listening sessions are pretty open invite. They run for 3 or 4 days a week over a month, beer is provided, and every member of the jury has “Neato” power which is like Veto power only the opposite. Sort of like how mitzvah’s are the opposite of sins, and I think it’s a genuinely dear move to invent the optimistic opposite to what is lacking in your language.

I like a lot of Pop’s moves. I like how, though they were sort of blind sided by Osheaga, and affected a bit by how very close the new “indie” festival is in time to Pop Montreal – a dangerous thing both for booking bands and for being the second ones digging into fans pocket books- Pop, at least publicly, played the mature kid. Got themselves involved in Osheaga with a Pop Montreal showcase and worked it out as best they could. Sustained good relationships in a way that seems to have kept any potential damage from affecting the artists. When I ask if Osheaga affected Pop, Dan Seligman makes a well balanced answer about finding out while in Barcelona, and how it was a bit of a shock that they didn’t tell them or talk to them about it, that they had to hear through rumour mill when Greenland and Gillette were the part of what helped create Pop in year 1.

Dan Seligman is polite about it, but doesn’t think what Osheaga ended up doing is at all the same, doesn’t think it left people with the same glow, doesn’t think the programming was genius- says there were a few obvious choices and a few bad ones which made for an odd balance, and it’s questionable whether they’ll find it cost effective to do their version of an independent music fest again. Seligman says he’s quite certain Osheaga lost a chunk of money, because that’s how these things go. For a corporation like Gillette, that probably won’t sell well to the higher ups in the long term. Seligman is clear- the people who put that festival on, and who run Greenland and the Gillette Entertainment Group, do what they do because they love music, and he has no doubt about that. But at the end of the day, they report to somebody above them who has different motivations, different perspectives, and (my words now) that’s what shapes their range of possible choices. For the kind of thing Pop Montreal wants to be, both for bands and for the city, this would be a limitation.

Pop Montreal is non-profit, run largely on government grants these days, as well as on corporate sponsors like McAuslan. They exist without needing to balance out against a bottom line. As the fest approaches an increasing number of people get work. The final number this year was around 30 jobs created, and that includes producers, promoters, volunteers coordinator, etc. The festival is staffed, during fest time, by a big team of volunteers. Similar to volunteers at the Fringe festival, volunteer time is rewarded with an access pass. 4 people are employed full time, year round, by POP and that obviously includes founder and boss man Dan Seligman.

I ask him again about danagement, not to harp on it, but it’s funny and I’m curious, and I wonder if bands get into Pop Montreal automatically if they’re managed by the danager? He says no. But anyway, he doesn’t see managing bands and running a festival as a conflict- he wouldn’t manage a band unless he really loved their music anyway, and he really only manages one band right now and there are so many spots at Pop that it’s hard to image the one ever affecting the other. Also- he’s not sure, but managing bands may be more trouble then it’s worth. He’s loved it and learned a lot but.. anyway, also- that Danagement website was done in fulfillment of a grant requirement and was pretty much made as a joke. I tell him I thought so and I’m glad. He laughs and says- not everybody has a sense of humour.

The guy seems pretty sincere about loving what he’s doing, and not fully practical, which I think is a good combination for dream fest making. He comes into the dim bar on a day of pouring rain with naught but an extra hoodie, hood in soggy place, “protecting” him from the elements. He’s a bit wide eyed. Later on he tells me a story about meeting with Roky Erickson, who has only played a handful of shows in recent years- a legend with an incredible story- a story about state sponsored cruelty inflicted on the creative and the criminally insane during the late sixties and early seventies, and about the kind of person who emerges from that with a desire to make music still in tact- and he talks about understanding from the looks on Erickson’s entourage’s faces that they hadn’t expected the festival to be run by a bunch of grubby kids. Erickson didn’t seem to mind, or notice much, but the entourage of family and managers had expected something with more corporate heft, more ducks in a row, more institutional polish, oddly enough. Instead what they got was probably more of this- soft spoken young guys in hoodies. A lack of play the game pretention that I, in my limited travels, would still identify as uniquely Montreal.

Dan Seligman is a full Montreal lover now, but says he was a total Toronto kid, he’d visited here a few times as a teenager and liked it but not enough to get it, or to resist doing his damnedest to declare Toronto the best. Seligman grew up one of those city kids in Toronto’s Annex, and it is cool there, and once he moved here, he smilingly tells me, he changed his mind about his home town’s super superiority. So I ain’t mad at him. He came to Montreal to go to McGill. He studied Religious Studies. When I ask him if there will be a place for live music in a post climate change economy, he gets my whiff of irony but speaks passionately. His view on music, live performance, and festivals is informed by his study of religion. People meeting to share an experience is increasingly an important, electrifying thing, a unifying thing. We can agree the world is fucked up, and that we’d rather it was not. And it’s easy to be numbed. We download music of all kinds from all around the world, and that’s a great and empowering thing, but it also can disassociate us from the people making that music. He says- we need visceral experience. When (Pop Montreal) puts on shows they want it to be a full sensory experience- the space is part of the performance, and the right combination of sense impressions will wake you up and make you aware that you are here.

The Arcade Fire want to do their next shows in a downtown cathedral, so that’s Dan Seligman’s main task right now; convincing the church body that this is in fact ok. Places like this mostly have no history or habit of renting themselves out as show venues and so the issue needs delicate explaining. Seligman and Pop have held shows in churches before, and have also negotiated with the military to fill their halls up with the worlds of crafts and modern dance instead of war craft. They do so by explaining that music is a cultural event, and so on. And somehow they do it in a way that communicates and works. At Puces Pop there were young guys in uniform walking around their colonized armoury a bit shly, taking it all in, and it was nice to see them there, you know?

I ask whether there’s a politics to POP and he says no, there’s no explicit political mandate. But the desire to bring people together in a joyful ways in this day and age has an inherent politics to it I think, and he agrees. There’s a social politics to it all, in other words, but no party platform. Maybe the Future of Music Summit is like our politics, he says; and that makes sense. Future of Music panels provided a satisfying brain undergirding to all the show seeing madness, and created a context for lots of interesting conversations.

I ask about cascading positive affects of Pop. He looks at me like I’m tiring him out, and then gets some traction and goes on to talk about 4 different hotels booked to capacity, bars and restaurants getting a bigger and bigger influx, more and more people coming from out of town. It is exhausting when you think about it: all those people, all those shows to organize, all that equipment to rent and move around and figure out the logistics of. I think I still have latent exhaustion from being a celebrant at it, so imagine that the dude in front of me is still walking around in a daze from having, once again, spearheaded it.

Pop is exhausting, Seligman says, intentionally so. It’s lovingly over stuffed, so that if you can’t get into a buzzed up show you don’t bat an eye, you wander a few blocks north or south until you find a line and you get inside and go learn something. Dan Seligman tells me, in a tiny, quiet, rainy bar, that he wants Pop Montreal to really feel like the end of the summer, to be this crazy exhausting beautiful time that you have to recover from, a time that melts in a haze of muchness and good sounds, and that the main thing you remember is that it had a glow about it. In this he and his team were successful. And that’s a remarkable, worth-learning-from thing.

to see all our coverage on POP Montreal, click here. To read what Tessa and her team got out of the Future of Music, try this.

A State of Independents: The Changing Definition of Indie

Jenny Toomey Executive Director, Future of Music Coalition

Molly Neuman Director Label Relations, eMusic

Ian Ilavsky Co-Owner, Constellation Records

Jeff Waye Label Owner, Ninja Tune / Big Dada / Counter / Third Side Music

Jeff Remedios, Arts and Crafts Records

Neuman: Retail channels have narrowed into highly specialized genres changing the way music is marketed, even within the “giant stratosphere” of the internet. Majors (major record labels) and large indies (independent labels, or labels representing independent artists) are both becoming more selective with who they represent.

Toomey: “Legacy” (established) artists are having to return to indie methods by necessity. They’re returning to the distribution modes of starting out.

Myspace is a decentralized mode of distribution. Many bands use it as their first place for promotion in the same way as 80s indie bands started self-distribution, but myspace is owned by the same company as Fox News.

Ilavsky: The old meaning of indie as punk, diy, queer politics, girl power, organic, collective, self-starting, self-regulating, alternative ethics. Indie now is just the shadow of these values. The promises of the 80s and 90s indie punk scene have been unfulfilled in the last 10 years. It is now easier than ever to record and produce music with digital technology getting people’s attention. Can indie values hold fast in the face of digital technologies? Artists making music in their bedrooms and creating an archive of their music with that of friends then building a structure to support it.

He believes that labels should assert their policies and values even though it will create a natural ceiling on sales. He hopes to have music viewed not as just another arm of the entertainment industry, but in its relation to other aspects of culture. We need to value and examine the production, dissemination, and exchange of cultural artifacts, considering “how broken the things around us are.”

Toomey: Each label has a taste, a flavour, an aesthetic, and a sound whether or not it contains an overt political statement through lyrics or emphasis on underground methods of management.

Remedios: Arts and Crafts was not formed as label, but as an idealistic 360 degree partnership in which he and his partner help with every aspect. Although artists have different needs and wants relating to the types of distribution they use, such as selling online songs individually or as albums, labels can bring intelligence to the artists’ ideas about what their band wants. He described the process of starting with a kernel of friends and bringing new people in with skills as the group’s needs grow, which sounds a lot like Indyish to me.

Waye: He only holds his own label to his standards and sees the use in letting other labels work within whatever framework they see to be most relevant.

Neuman: Mentioned labels who maintain such a fiercely independent stance that they don’t even want to join with other indies.

Paying Mechanicals (artist is paid out for usually 10 tracks of an album) and Profit Split (after the record is released, artist and label split sales 50/50). Profit split is a 90s development and most labels now pay mechanicals in a profit share agreement.

Ilavsky: The rules which labels create for their artists are based on specific local conditions and the needs of bands in specfic urban locations. He discussed keeping things on a human scale by sharing the knowledge and experiences of indie labels with other people. The playbook by which the indies operate was passed down from the majors and didn’t evolve out of indies.

If labels don’t carry an overt political stand and provide no analysis of the system (alignment with a cultural ideology), they cannot be defined in that way and are instead defined by how much money they put into marketing, whether or not they use a publicist, which radio stations they sell to. The industry is well mapped out for indies to access except in terms of scale.

Labels will sell less copies of an album on principle. They can spend less on marketing and still have artists make enough money to survive if they use the Profit Split model.

Any indie label that has managed to get a foothold has been mainly on the back of one good band.

Toomey: There were the original punk rock, anti-commericialist movements, but labels like Matador and Subpop which were deemed indie were actually overtly commercial in their attempt to bring unknown artists to the forefront.

Remedies: For him the act of subversion takes the form of Matador and Subpop style labels of getting indie music out into the major channels. This means valuing cultural expression for itself and not necessarily for the values it carries.

Audience question from member of Monkeyclaws, a music collective: Indie record stores, bands, and their labels have always had a strong personal relationship. What is to be expected from indie music stores online?

Waye: Does the exercise of making an album even exist anymore? The creation process has changed to the point where songs stand on their own. He also emphasized the discrepancy between online sales and retail sales in the number of people downloading versus those buying at stores.

He ended the discussion by suggesting that the way in which the Canadian government supports cultural production, development, and maintenance is something to be thankful for, but it simultaneously creates a sense of entitlement to be able to put art out there.

Patrick Curley President, Third Side Music

Michael Hausman, Owner, Michael Hausman Artist Management, Inc.

Stacey Mitsopulos Lawyer, Taylor Mitsopulos Burshtein, Entertainment Lawyers

Terry O’Brien Relationship Manager, SOCAN

Harry Poloner Vice President, Membership Group, ASCAP

I came in late to this panel to catch the majority of panellists expressing their ignorance of Creative Commons licenses. This makes me sad. Granted, until this past year I didn’t know they existed either, but these people are professionals in music publishing. You would think developments in copyrighting would cross their desk. Several audience members took the opportunity to describe how the creative commons functions to bring further relevance and accessibility to artist licensing.

The panel was concerned with emphasizing the lack of government support for creative commons and the subsequent exclusion from federal courts if the rights in these licenses are denied. Panellists who had some knowledge of creative commons found them to be most applicable to private uses such as remixing and non-commerical distribution.

Audience member, Professor at U of Ottawa defends creative commons as a way of making sure that work is attributed to an artist, to match integrity. It is perhaps not best for commericial exploitation, but exists not in competition with this type of distribution, rather in combination with, the two can co-exist.

It was encouraged to hire a lawyer for half an hour or so to look over a band’s contract.
The main focus of this panel was to educate artists (of whom there were many in the audience) of the ways in which their songs get used and tracked. Information about these processes can help artists make better decisions about how to manage their work in order to benefit from sales and not be taken advantage of.

If an artist owns their songs, they are paid for any reproduction thereof, whereas unowned songs (owned by a record label, a songwriter distinct from the band, etc.) can be played on the radio (using reproduced copies of the song) without payment.

Bands can collect royalties for bar shows if a door cover is paid or admission of some kind of charged. Artists need only provide proof to SOCAN of the show with a setlist and information about the venue, photos, etc. for their royalties to be processed.

Film companies hoping to use an artist’s song in a movie project must go through a complicated process to use the work of licensed artists. For this reason, movie producers are more inclined to use independent songs.

Artists can make the most money from their music by controlling (or better yet, owning) 100% of their master tracks.

Mitsopulos gave the example of Falkan Beach, a Canadian TV show that uses up to 15 songs per episode, most of which are Canadian content. As a production, they listen to all music sent to them by bands, so artists in the audience were encouraged to send music as a means of promotion.

Publishing deals generally take place after about 20,000-25,000 record sales.

Self-promotion was stressed, as was rights management, either d.i.y. or getting a trusted person to help.

Anthony referred to the “middle class musician” (a main theme of the summit) as the new label, one who is able to live off of their music sales and seeks out labels to provide services for them, creating a shift away from labels’ role as a “real estate” situation of ownership to that of having the artist license their work out to labels.

Hausman described how publishing sales are increasing while record sales are decreasing. In this way, labels are less necessary as people can do publishing for their selves, instead of needing a publisher to get airplay and generate income.

Where music publishers once sold sheet music, the Beatles marked the beginning of artists writing their own songs, resulting in changes to the role of publishers.

Anthony added that businesses have more money for publishing than the public.

Audience question: How is the tracking of artists’ performance, profits, changing because it was formerly tracked through radioplay?

ASCAP has recently created “midiguide” which recognizes 4-5 seconds of a song when monitoring in realtime, 24/7, to track radio, television and non-commercial radio.

SOCAN uses a cue sheet, the need for performing rights revenue, the creation of the new ringtone tariff, and future internet tariffs, they have a hotel room tariff. With techonology always outpacing tariffing development, tarffis are affected retroactively. There is the new problem of who to charge the tariff to for internet radio.

O’Brien answered an audience question about managing a friend’s band by suggesting the manager sign a simple contract agreement with his friend. He also recommended the book “This Business of Music”. O’Brien discussed the Public Rights Organization (p.r.o.) which doesn’t require a band to have representation in order to sign up.

Hausman said that if you can’t understand a contract or afford a lawyer to read it over for you, don’t sign it.

Curley discussed the demo fund from Factor. He also described the process of finding new acts as being similar to the ways in which we all discover music. The panellists are all fundamentally music fans who check out shows and read the papers.

For more information on changes in music publishing, check out David Byrne’s presentation which used powerpoint to comedic effects.

More POP coverage from Tessa and her Merry Band of Indyish Bloggers. Mr. John reporting here.

Sandy Pearlman – Visiting McGill Scholar and Producer, Blue Oyster Cult, The Clash
Daniel Levitin – Professor, McGill University and Produced/Consultant, Stevie Wonder, Steely Dan, and Chris Isaak.
Susan Rogers – CIRMMT Fellow, McGill University
Gary Lucas – Recording Artist, Mighty Quinn Records
Paul Hoffert – Professor, Harvard University, York University

Pearlman and Leviton said technology could create a new golden age.

Rogers referred to the new technology (even the older tech of just multitracking) can affect quality because its so easy to record. When it is hard and expensive people don’t practice practice practice to get it right. People can’t even play instruments with the idea that “we’ll fix it later in protools”. Makes it easier for crud to be out there.

Pearlman: society’s full of crap obviously music is too. People can sift through it.

Some idiot asked an question but brought up that the problems in music are the same problems with everyone: our relationships with each other.

Lucas: trys to support artists as much as possible. He co-wrote two jeff buckley songs. I don’t know why he brought that up.

An unnamed reporter brought up the RIAA, and their suing people for downloading music.

Leviton, Lucas, Pearlmean agree that’s dumb.

Some dude said: “that the system should be overthrown” and a new system put in place for musicians.

Pearlman responded: it’s already been overthrown because you can download everything you could want for free.

Dude: agreed, but wants a way to pay musicians.

Pearlaman: why should they get paid? But he agrees.

Dude then told the panel they don’t really understand the new art forms and music that technology has brought.

Levitan said if john lennon was a 20 year old today, he’d be doing mashups.

Levitan brought up how major label artists make 5% of the profits. Many major label musicians still need dayjobs.

Hoffert: mentioned how between the panel they were responsible for 40 million dollars in record sales. He thinks there are ways that labels and musicians can make money with new solutions. He was in china and set up a multimillion deal with the universities there for music downloaded by students off of their internet systems. The students don’t pay and the music is in a new market and money was made.

Some wank “asked a question” where he rambled about sacredness in music. It took a long time. Lots of talk about sacred stuff. Lots ‘o wanks asking smart people dumb questions.

Lucas: the struggle, the existential struggle of making music is sacred for him. He mentioned the 60s.

Pearlman: digital technology can remove this struggle. Used the example of a friend’s classical label that recently recorded an album in one take and it came through. It reproduced the composer’s (bach’s) own struggle.

Rogers: the studio is a sacred place. One is fortunate to be in a studio. Every attempt, every take is sacred when you want someone else to experience it.

Wank kept at it, asked Rogers if it’s been compromised.

Rogers asked for clarification. People started leaving muttering.

Friday afternoon at the Future of Music Summit, Sarah covers the DIY Online Distribution panel

Lindsay Lynch – Operations Manager, MapleMusic.com
Brian Camelio – President, ArtistShare
Shannon Coulter – Director of A&R, Magnatune.com
Nathaniel Krenkel – Label Head, Team Love
Lindsay Lynch – Operations Manager, MapleMusic.com
Jamie Perlman – Director of Business Development Retail Partners, Snocap
Derek Sivers – President and Programmer, CD Baby, cdbaby.com
Moderated by Dick Huey – CEO, Toolshed Inc.

Team Love is a 50/50 profit share record company which has put out out 10 records so far, Nate is the manager of Bright Eyes.

Maplemusic.com is an online store through which Canadian artists can sell their music and merch. They take $3.25/item and sometimes less.

Magnatune.com allows filmmakers to buy music for their movies on a sliding scale depending on their budget. A quick, no fuss form is available online.

People are encouraged to visit tunecore.com, cdbaby.com and soundexchange.com and to learn more about creative commons.

The model that many of these people offered was a much more humble approach to the music biz than the traditional one and the general conclusion seemed to be that there’s no one way to guarantee the successful marketing of one’s music online. However, everyone seemed confident that the quality of an artist’s work and their commitment to that work definitely plays a role in selling their music.

Shannon of magnatune.com, a company which gives half of all sales to their artists and also allows them to retain the rights to their music for use and sale elsewhere, spoke about the notion of sliding scale prices online.

In the case of independent artists everyone spoke about how when one is buying a piece of music from an artist that they love they’re not necessarily thinking so much about the price and are often willing to pay more than the lowest suggested cost. Additionally, the panel spoke about how one of the advantages of having a sliding price scale is giving fans with more income
the option of helping to actually fund the record and thus have a direct influence on the career of their favourite artist.

Generally, everyone was urging all the artists in the room to be realistic about what kind of money they could make through online distribution. Some even spoke about how the expectation to break even was more than enough.

Ultimately the commitment of the artist was held as paramount.

Sarah’s coverage of the Young Artists Panel on Friday at the Future of Music Summit at McGill during Pop Montreal

Torquil Campbell – Musician, Stars
Win Butler – Musician, Arcade Fire
Brian Current – Composer
Bernadette Houde – Musician, Lesbians on Ecstasy
Moderated by Chris Taylor – Lawyer, Taylor Mitsopulos Burshtein, Entertainment Lawyers

Also in the audience was the CEO of FACTOR.

Of note, Chris Taylor represents Metric, Emily Haines, MSTRKRFT and Death from Above 1979

Torquil Campbell

Campbell spoke about FACTOR or the Foundation to Assist Canadian Talent On Record an organization with a 25 year history of supporting Canadian talent. He told of how the Stars have been largely funded by FACTOR grants (www.factor.ca), grants which are funded in part by the Canadian Gov’t and private radio. He spoke of how much was made possible by receiving these grants and how he wished there was even more money of this kind that could be made available to Canadian artists. More begrudgingly, he spoke of how one often starts to receive grant money after a band’s most intense period of struggle has already ended, and how he wished there had been more money available during these periods of rejection and obscurity.

Win Butler

Win spoke about how even though it’s sometimes even better to just set out on your own, it’s also nice to have the “magic money” of grants. He mentioned how all but one of Arcade Fire’s music videos have been funded by grants, notably from videofact (www.videofact.ca).

Brian Current

Brain spoke of how there are currently at least 500 writing classical composers in Canada. He then told of how classical composers get their money from a variety of grants from the Canada Council at both the municipal and federal level, as well as from universities. He talked about how this year’s touring money has been slashed by the gov’t funding that usually sponsers him and how much difficulty this has caused him. He explained that it usually takes between 8 and 12 months to compose a piece of classical music and how the provision of grant money allows composers to live modestly while writing a piece.

Bernadette Houde

Bernadette spoke about LOE’s limited experience with grants and the complications and time involved in applying for them. She told of how LOE is currently in the process of applying for their first FACTOR grant and how they’d already received a small showcase grant. She also spoke about the intricacies of trying to get a bank account for LOE and how because of Quebec law, they actually ended up having to put the account under the name of “Lesbians in Ecstasy”.

Torquil Campbell

Torquil spoke of how now more than ever is a time in which the media in Canada is interested in the music being made in Canada by Canadian artists. He told of his experience of Candians feeling a real sense of commuinity and ownership with the music made in Canada. He then stated his feeling that it is people’s personal experience with the music that will ultimately determine it’s success. He expressed the belief that people’s connection to the music has more
power than the media in contributing to the sucess of a particular artist or group.

Win Butler

Win spoke of how the Arcade Fire seriously considered joining Alien 8 and Arts and Crafts before finally signing with the U.S.’s Merge records. He also spoke of how even before signing a record deal, the band felt very supported in Montreal. He mentioned how it took “a good three years” before they were able to play in an actual club instead of in a friend’s loft and how, after having sold out Casa del Popolo, everything felt much easier. Lastly, he spoke about how the main goal of the band with the first record was actually just to record that record and that until
it was completed, talks of who to sign it to were not realy relevant.

Bernadette Houde

Bernie spoke about how due to the greater popularity of electro in Europe, LOE have been able to form a strong fanbase which has allowed them to tour and create more music in Canada. She expressed the wish for more support for people who do sample based music and the need for more help litigating laws around this.

Torquil Campbell

Torq finished his remarks by speaking of how in order to create he needs to distance himself from his success. “I have to be a loser to do things” was one of the remarks he made regarding how the mentality he held before sucess plays a large part in his creative proces. Lastly, he expressed the need for funding to be made available for all different types of artists in Canada. Roughly paraphrased, he seems to feel that if our gov’t stopped putting their money towards wars there could be even more money available for all the talented people in this country.

Win Butler

Win’s final comment came when someone asked about the importance of hiring an entertainment lawyer. Although he recognized the need for representation in certain contexts, he emphasized the need to focus on one’s music stating that the only thing you really have control over is “what you do in your room, your art”.

We promised more coverage…careful what you wish for people. “Field Notes” from the Team, a.k.a Tessa and her crew.

On Thursday, David Byrne spoke at the Future of Music Summit with his touring manager (who answered some questions at the end). Byrnes had prepared a Powerpoint presentation with piecharts and graphs that were mostly useful visual aids, but the majority of slides were hilariously irrelevant images and phrases.

He came on stage and nervously launched into a rundown of how record labels operate (for the large portion of us who are somewhat unclear) and how their role is changing with developments in technology, most importantly internet downloading. Here are some notes on what he had to say:

-record companies pay small loans to bands on tour, expecting to gain back on cd sales (tours are a promotion of an album, not to make money)
-they have experience in business

The evolution of music sales:
-large record stores like sam goody, etc. will be gone in 5 years, tower records is now bankrupt
-walmart and target will still be selling music which makes record labels gear toward sales in target, amazon, etc.
-the public have a loyalty to brick and mortar stores and a guilt over selling, buying online
-negative opinion of online copy restrictions
-the digital copying management act is like the prohibition (in that if something is important to a part of the population they’ll find ways to get it, forces development of underground markets)

New direction:
-potential for selling music on personal pages like myspace, could create payment system
-the need for a “meta music site”, something to amalgamate music downloads with a search option that searches through all websites

Effects of technology and changes in music:
-previous music developments like shift from vinyl to cassettes to cds, created the need for new expensive equipment, whereas with downloads most people already have computers
-esoteric and obscure music is becoming more easily investible because it is equally easy to distribute online as in the real world
-mtv doesn’t play videos anymore, so why make them?
-homemade videos on youtube, but million dollar videos unnecessary
-Recording costs have been drastically reduced
-on home computers the sound quality can be comparable to in the studio, one doesn’t need a record company to do recording for you, don’t need to go into debt
-end of c.d. pressing plants, designing covers, etc.
-right now: record companies own the printing plants and other production areas
-instead of record companies outsourcing, he suggests artists getting together as a node, getting various resources together, have a business person to organize
-Byrnes working to develop that idea in the next few years
-other modes of promotion: reality shows, live shows, t-shirts
-Byrnes makes more money from movie music (selling to films) than record sales

Pie charts showing the difference between revenue from a label release vs. itunes album revenue
Label gets larger percent in itunes model, why? What is the label actively doing in that process?
And why does an artist get the same percentage in both models, even with drastic changes to the jobs being done by each person

Record Deals:
Equity Deal: 50/50 deal with investor/artist, a large cash advance (arbitrary advance)

Pressing and Distribution Deal (artist takes care of many record company jobs,
licensing deal)

-records companies have the desire to adapt to new needs
-Byrnes makes a point of saying that its not only fringe music that is good, music that wants to be marketed to a huge audience is not a reflection of the artist, its just how it is marketed, but he wants the possibility for other types of music to be accessible
-Byrnes recently downloaded the new Justin Timberlake and the new Christina Aguilera songs

“Thanks a lot, this is a lot harder than singing.”

Changes to live shows: the use of blogs for news about shows and reviews of concerts
“I don’t want to listen to live music online”, rather in the digital age it makes one want to see live shows more than before
-with blogs, a manager can view and explore the experiences of fans, adapt marketing accordingly
-record labels using the internet to exploit live material, creating more content from it

Creative Commons Licenses: some are even more restrictive than regular copyright deals, most are more so, but in varying specific ways
-Byrnes described his involvement with creative commons licenses on his project with Brian Eno

Finally, giving people access to materials, tools, art promotes creativity, restricting information causes society to crumble

These are more of Tessa’s notes “from the field”. Hot off the wire.. as they say. Stay tuned, there’s lots more to come.

Larry LeBlanc – Canadian Bureau Chief, Head of Billboard Magazine in Canada

LeBlanc spoke about how 30 years ago the magazine was only dealing with Canadian content and how now, because of the digital music revolution, worldwide issues have become much more pertinent.

He spoke of the diverging points of view regarding this technological advancement and how he feels the view of record companies as “the enemy” is one of the most prevalent of the industry today. Also, he talked about how indie labels are ignoring the big labels all together and doing things their own way. He concluded his opening remarks by talking about the advantages and possibilities associated with this technology, including the possibilities of networking with other musicians from around the world and setting up tours via the internet based on publicity gained through the internet.

Pete Genner – Music Manager, Sincere Management, Secretary General, IMMF

Genner spoke about how the music industry is currently broke in the face of the consumer now having more power than ever as the distributer (downloader, sharer) and manufacturer (burner) of music. He reflected on the hostility it seems some in the industry are now feeling towards consumers as a result of this. He presented the problem as one of trying to force an old business model onto a 21st century situation and an entirely unprecedented way of distributing music. He stated that the slumping record sales are nothing less than a foreshadowing of the future of record sales everywhere and presented the need for a plan to harness digital music technology in a way which is mutually beneficial for the artist and consumer.

Catharine Saxberg – Executive Director, Canadian Music Publishers Association

Saxberg echoed the previous comments as she spoke about a new music economy. She made the very importnt point of the need for compensation for the artists who are putting their music out there.

Paul Spurgeon – Vice President Legal Services & General Counsel, SOCAN

Spurgeon expressed his “bullish” optimism regarding the use of these new technologies and the way it has allowed more people than ever to access music. He spoke about the lasting influence music has in society and how businesses which rely on music content are now making more money than ever. He then mentioned the possibility of seeking tariffs on things such as ringtones in order to give artists monetary compensation for the use of their music.

Graham Henderson – President, Canadian Recording Industry Association

Henderson stated that everything around this digital revolution is “not so chaotic as it seems.” He spoke about a “rosy” future with more possibilities for artists to “exploit” their music and get compensated for it. He talked about how artists and record companies are passed the shock of downloading and are now in a position to take advantage of the possibilities offered by this new technology.

Andrew Cash – Musician, Canadian Music Creators Coalition

Cash spoke about how musicians need to be given a platform to really discuss their views regarding this technology, especially in regards to file sharing. He spoke about file sharing as a “really viable” way for artists to get their music out there. He concluded with what appeared to be one of the main discussions to be had at the FMC– how to use this technology as a way of making it possible for musicians to earn a “middle class” wage.

These are some of Tessa’s notes “from the field”. Her team has been out, tirelessly covering the conference by day and the bands by night.. all in the name of things that make you go ‘ish.

Welcoming everyone to the FMC where Jenny Toomey, Executive Director of the 4th Annual Future of Music Coalition, Don McLean, Dean of the Schulich School of Music and the two head coordinators of POP montreal.

Toomey began by discussing the purpose of the FMC as being able to have conferences that are both artist and fan related, and that will lend helpful information to as well showcase emerging artists. She also emphasized an attention to diversity which would help different artists from various genres gain knowledge about the future of music.

She talked about the importance of empowering musicians through teaching them how to use new kinds of technology and giving them more of an understanding about liscensing and other sorts of legal agreements.

She presented the conference as a sort of litmus test for ideas about how to navigate the music industry and new technology. The point here being that when you have a bunch of musicians and industry people as the audience for your ideas you get direct feedback.

Toomey also spoke about how she feels that we are now in the second wave of the digital music revolution. Considering the first wave to have taken place at the beginning of the dot com revolution around the time of Napster (2000) and to be inclusive of the bust of the dot com hype. She seemed optimistic about how in 2006 artists can begin to use this technology in a positive and profitable way.

Toomey’s concluding remark was about the inevitability of change in the face of such a high powered digital movement. While she sees no one “solution” to this revolution– something many people were trying to come up with during the 1st wave– she seemed more interested in having a conference which would bring forth numerous possibilities for the future of music distribution, one of these being an increased sense of accessability for artists.