Canadian Musician - November/December 2018 | Page 10

INDIE
INSIDER
Lessons from a
STAR-MAKER
In Conversation with Invictus Entertainment Group’s Louis O’Reilly
By Michael Raine
D
uring CCMA Country Music Week in September 2018,
Canadian Musician sat down for a wide-ranging conver-
sation with Louis O’Reilly – one of the most influential
figures on the business side of Canadian country music.
O’Reilly is currently the VP of Invictus Entertainment Group,
overseeing the firm’s artist management, record label, and pub-
lishing divisions. He also manages artists such as Brett Kissel,
George Canyon, Aaron Pritchett, and Corey Marks. Prior to join-
ing Invictus, he founded his own artist management company
(O’Reilly International) and record label (On Ramp Records) that
represented The Johner Brothers, Patricia Conroy, and other top
Canadian country artists.
To watch the full interview, where O’Reilly discusses additional
topics like A&R, cross-genre promotion, major labels versus indie
labels, country’s changing fan demographics, and more, go to
CanadianMusician.com/YouTube.
Canadian Musician: Are you using streaming’s data analytics to
inform decisions in your artists’ careers, such as where to tour?
Louis O’Reilly: We certainly do. What a lot of people don’t know is
that I’m a computer programmer on the side and I’ve programmed
software related to the music business. When I first got into the
business, at the time, there were only 12 radio stations that made
up the country panel. So I programmed something called Trax
Report, where every country music station in Canada reports to it.
There are now 65 stations that report to Trax Report. I programmed
that 100 per cent myself. I’ve been tapping into those analytics in
terms of radio play and where my artists are hot – a heat map is
what I call it.
When I was at O’Reilly International, we had this dashboard that I
built and now Invictus has it. I’m starting to pull data from the Spotify
and Apple Music and Amazon APIs to enhance this heat map. Now,
it’s good but we don’t necessarily say, “This artist is hot in Brandon,
Manitoba, so we’re going there.” We’re going there regardless. When I
manage artists, I say, “You want a career in Canada? That means Bran-
don and that means Montreal and Quebec City and Newfoundland,
and it also means Iqaluit and Inuvik. All these places.”
If you look at Brett Kissel’s next tour, we’re going up and playing
10 • C A N A D I A N M U S I C I A N
the north in a smaller capacity because there are fans up there, but
it’s not because Spotify tells us they’re there. We want to play every
nook and cranny of Canada and bring fans out. That’s always been
my strategy is to tour, tour, tour – especially when you have an en-
tertaining artist. They will build fans through radio and their music,
but they will also build fans through their live show.
CM: Thinking of artists like Brett Kissel, Dallas Smith, Lindsay
Ell, Tim Hicks, Whitney Rose, and others, it seems there is a
star-making machine in Canadian country that maybe wasn’t
there to the same degree 15 or 20 years ago. How did the
Canadian country industry become more efficient at creating
our own homegrown stars?
LO: I think a lot of it has to do with the quality of the music. Hit
songs make hit artists. About 15 years ago, I would get calls from
country radio programmers and they’d say, “Hey, I need more Can-
Con country music.” I was lucky that someone like Patricia Conroy
or Brad Johner or the Johner Brothers had the quality of songs that
could possibly compete with the Americans, so they were in the
in-club. But now, young artists have amazing producers and have
access to amazing songs. When I listen to a Canadian playlist on
Spotify or Apple Music or Amazon, I go, “Wow, this is just as good as
the Americans.” I call it the “inflation of excellence” …
A song that was a hit song in the 1980s they don’t think is a hit
today. So, they have to work so much harder to develop a hit. Their
ears and everything are tuned better, the production is so much
higher, and they won’t settle for anything less than that. So when
a young artist comes out with music, it’s incredible. They can’t get
away with crap that we could. And they are so much more intel-
ligent and the ability to produce high-quality sound, as you know,
with technology today, that is a huge factor. You hear people pro-
ducing Grammy-winning albums in a closet. How great is that?
Also, you had to get yourself on television before. Everyone
pined to get an interview on CTV or Canada AM or [Open Mike with
Mike Bullard]. I am not saying “Who cares about that?” now, because
it’s still important, but now it’s direct access to the consumer. You
can create amazing video content that millions of people can see.
How wonderful is that?