Canadian Musician - January / February 2020

Canadian Music Publisher, Songwriter & Screen Composer Orgs Urge Ratification of Trade Agreement TIM POTOCIC Sonic Unyon’s Tim Potocic Elected Chair of CIMA Board The Canadian Independent Music Asso- ciation (CIMA)'s Board of Directors has elected Sonic Unyon Records’ Tim Potocic as its new chair. He will serve a three-year term. Potocic is co-owner and president of the Hamilton-based indie label and artist management company. In 2009, Sonic Un- yon became the organizing force behind Hamilton’s free Supercrawl music and arts festival. A CIMA member for over 20 years, he currently sits on the FACTOR board and has been recognized with a Canadian Mu- sic Industry Award for Label of the Year and a Hamilton Entrepreneur of the Year award. For more information, contact CIMA: 416-485-3152, www.cimamusic.ca. In December, six organizations representing Canadian music publishers, songwriters, and screen composers released an open letter addressed to the federal parliament urging that it quickly ratify the Canada-U.S.-Mexico (CUSMA) trade agreement, which will replace NAFTA. The organizations behind the joint letter are SOCAN, the CMRRA, Music Publishers Cana- da, the Songwriters Association of Canada, APEM (representing French Canadian music pub- lishers), the Screen Composers Guild of Canada, and SPACQ (representing French Canadian screen composers). They favour the copyright reform contained within the trade agreement that would see Canada extend the term of copyright protection from the current term of the life of the creator plus 50 years to the life of the creator plus 70 years. “Adding another 20 years to the life of a copyright means a robust creative sector, more Canadian cultural exports, and the growth of many innovative businesses that have embraced the digital market. It is long past time for Canada to catch up to its international trading partners in this respect,” the letter states. For the full letter and more information, go to www.musicpublisher.ca. CCMA Reveals 2019/20 Board of Directors, Achieves Gender Parity The Canadian Country Music Association (CCMA) has announced its 2019-2020 Board of Directors. Achieving the goal set out by CCMA President Tracy Martin and the board two years ago, the 2019-2020 CCMA Board of Directors now boasts a 50 per cent female mem- bership. The board will set new goals for the coming years, including launching the CCMA Foundation, increasing awareness and opportunities for the country music format outside of Canada, and continuing to celebrate members throughout the year. With five new members, the new board consists of eight elected directors (Rob Cy- rynowski, Jenn Dalen, Cliff Dumas, Paul Ferguson, Chris Henderson, Joel Jelinski, Amanda Kingsland, KT Timmermans) and eight appointed directors (Kristen Burke, Warren Copnick, Jackie Dean, Brianne Deslippe, Angelika Heim, Steve Kane, Denise Ross, Charlotte Thomp- son). Ted Ellis will remain as chair for the 2019-2020 season. For more information, go to www.ccma.org. PureGrainMedia Launches Sax&Violins PureGrainMedia, parent company of Canada-based alternative music and pop culture website Puregrainaudio. com, has launched a new website, Sax&Violins, at www.saxviolins.com. The site covers all-things classical, jazz, bues, soul, and folk, with news, reviews, interviews, features, photos, and more. “When PureGrainMedia was founded in 2002, we quickly realized music would play a significant role in our scope of coverage. With a focus on quality, not quantity, PureGrain- Audio launched in 2005 and would soon become a name synonymous with alternative music news and features. We have grown, changed, and learned an incredible amount in the nearly 15 years since, and it is with great pleasure that we are finally able to prop- erly cover, and pay homage to, some of the very music which led to PureGrainAudio’s birth,” says co-founder Chris Gonda. For more information, go to www.saxviolins.com. … In the four months following its launch in July 2019, Entandem says it collected more than $5 million by licensing 3,300 companies to use music. Entandem is jointly owned and operated by SOCAN and Re:Sound and was created to streamline the process of getting businesses licensed to use music, such as retailers, restaurants, nightclubs, fitness clubs, and more. The money collected from licences is distributed to SOCAN and Re:Sound’s member songwriters, composers, music publishers, artists, and record labels. www.entandemlicensing.com. CANADIAN MUSICIAN 13

Canadian Musician - January / February 2020 | Page 13