Tories set to slash diversity fund for specialty music if we let them

By Andrew Cash

Well, we knew there had to be a hitch when Stephen Harper got up at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa to sing a Beatles song. Setting the bar sufficiently low – it was a song Ringo sang, after all – is a Harper specialty.

But as the country woke up to the image of our wooden PM at the piano, many Canadian recording artists were twigging to yet another arts cut – one they say will hobble Canada’s specialized music community.

And like Harper’s arts misstep in the last election, this one – the chopping of the Canada Music Fund’s Canadian Musical Diversity component – has once again engaged and enraged a grassroots arts revolt. Read the rest of this entry »

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Bell’s Web Choke

Okay, wag your finger at China all you want over Internet censorship in Tibet – then clench your fingers into a fist over how your very own Canadian service providers, Rogers and Bell, are limiting what you can access online.

It’s not the same as China’s blocking of YouTube and the BBC, but now that Bell and Rogers have admitted they are slowing online connections, it should make you very afraid.

Confirming what many had suspected for a year now, Bell last week was forced to admit that users of popular peer-to-peer software like BitTorrent, which facilitates quick, efficient sharing of large files, were having their connections slowed on its network during peak hours between 4 pm and 2 am. (Rogers engages in the same practice.)

Bell claims it’s necessary to “traffic-shape” because a small clutch of “bandwidth hogs” illegally sharing music and movies are clogging the pipeline for everyone else.

Bell’s decision plays into the popular spin promoted by Hollywood and the major record labels that everyone using BitTorrent is a thief.

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Give A Little Bit… More

Songwriters are at the bottom of the music industry food chain. They don’t get asked for their autograph at airports and, aside from cashing the infrequent royalty cheque at which at least the bank manager raises an eyebrow, they trudge along in their craft largely unheralded and anonymous.

So it’s interesting that these lowly folks now caught in the crossfire between file-sharers and multinational labels may have tapped into one of the most promising solutions so far to the entire downloading dilemma.

That’s the intro to a possibly historic meeting, Thursday, February 21, at Ryerson where the Songwriters Association of Canada (SAC) – to much fanfare, not to mention gnashing of teeth – debuted its version of a plan to monetize the downloading and sharing of music files.

The problem the songwriters are dealing with, indeed, the one plaguing the entire industry at a time when voracious Internet appetites demand instant diversion, is how to get paid while still making the peer to peer experience feel free.

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The Future Is Music-Friendly

The future is music-friendly
Industry gabfest unveils cyber tune-swap solution that could well mend the hole in artists’ pockets
By ANDREW CASH

Montreal — I like wearing hats, and at the Future of Music Coalition (FMC) conference running October 5 to 7, I’m wearing two.

My plan at this gabfest on the music biz everything from cyber issues to arts funding is to be a panellist and then spend the rest of the time gathering info for the article you’re reading.

But things get strange right off the bat and then stranger still as a spectacular plan is unveiled that could finally solve the puzzle of how musicians can make money out of those digital 0s and 1s.

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