Forty per cent is an awfully big piece of the pie to devote to a relatively small music market , leaving just 60 per cent of a station ’ s playlist to cover everything else in the world listeners want . As Cross points out , maybe the more rational approach is to ask , “ In this world , what is the natural level of CanCon based on what are we producing , what are we capable of funding , what are consumers capable of ingesting , and what is the country capable of sustaining ?” In the past , determining that number would ’ ve meant finding the percentage of record store shelf space taken up by Canadian albums and use that as a ball park figure . There are now many more parts to the equation , having to take into account streaming and YouTube views and all the ways people now consume music .
“ The question is : what is the appetite for CanCon ? What is the natural , healthy , culturally-protective level of CanCon and how do we regulate that in a world where a lot of music distribution is inherently and forever unregulateable ?” says Cross .
As Cross alludes to , is all this talk of how CanCon should be applied to radio missing the bigger point ? Streaming is the multi-billion dollar elephant in the room . By arguing over radio , do we risk fighting over crumbs while the elephant takes the peanut sack ?
Regulating CanCon on radio was simple . There are only a finite number of songs on a playlist so you know how many songs make a certain percentage of that list . The CRTC can enforce this because it controls who gets a broadcast licence . It ’ s almost quaint in how governable it is . Streaming , on the other hand , is an uncontrollable beast that puts the reins in the hands of consumers . So how do we take the most
basic principle of CanCon – that Canadians should be exposed to Canadian art – and apply it to streaming ? There is yet to be a clear answer , but there are interesting suggestions .
On the major streaming services , availability is no concern . They have upwards of 35 million songs and nearly any Canadian song is available . But with 35 million songs , there are zero guarantees a Canadian listener will be exposed
to a Canadian song . As both McCarty and Cross point out , quotas can ’ t work in the streaming world , so maybe the solution is in promotion and recommendation .
“ Distribution in music and the availability of Canadian music on those services is not a problem . It is the accessibility of it that , I ’ m not saying it is a problem , but that is where we have to focus our concerns and that ’ s where we have to make sure that not only is the deck not stacked against Canadian artists , but hopefully the deck is stacked in favour of Canadian artists so that Canadians can have ready access to their own culture ,” says SOCAN ’ s McCarty . “ I think if the government is going to put their attention anywhere , they should look at that .” For McCarty , that means looking at the streaming services ’ significant recommendation and curation tools , as well as the prized spots on a service ’ s homepage that provides exposure . For example , when a listener searches for a song by popular
604 Records ’ Jonathan Simkin
American alt-country artist Ryan Adams , what if along with the direct search results , the streaming service also returned a recommendations list saying , “ If you like Ryan Adams , maybe you will like [ Canadians ] The Strumbellas , The Sadies , and Cowboy Junkies .”
It is not a far-fetched suggestion considering many of the streaming services are already targeting Canadians with localized playlists . “ When I was working for Songza [ which has since been bought and folded into Google Play Music ], we made sure that we had a substantial number of Canadian-based or Canadian-flavoured playlists because we knew there was a demand out there for it ,” recalls Cross . “ CanCon has created a tremendous amount of musical nationalism in this country where people are totally cool with hearing Canadian music . So we ’ ve built up the momentum and built up the habits in Canadians who want to hear more Canadian music . The question is : how do we keep them doing that without putting the entire burden on radio ?”
As an industry with a common goal in exposing Canadians to Canadian music , how do we move forward ? There is no clear answer . As Cross says , CanCon has been a tremendous success story and the system is not broken , but it needs adjusting . That much most people agree on . But exactly what those adjustments should be – and even what the end goal should be – elicits a lot of conflicting opinions . At some point in the near future , we ’ ll need to come to a consensus .
Michael Raine is the Assistant Editor of Canadian Musician
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