2009 Year in Review

2009 IN REVIEW – by Bob D’Eith

2009 was a crazy, busy year!

Vancouver 2009 JUNO Awards

The year started off in full JUNO Awards mode. All hands were on deck at Music BC preparing for Canada’s biggest music celebration. The Vancouver JUNO Awards March 26-29th were an incredible success, from the WestJet Street Party (produced by John Donnelly) to the VIP Lounge at the Shangri-la hotel (featuring some once in a lifetime jam sessions and the Mavi Jeans gifting lounge) to the Junofest, Juno Cup, Fan Fare, Awards Gala and of course the show at GM place (featuring Russell Peters). The after-parties were incredible. One standout occurrence was when local artist Ali Milner got up and sang with Divine Brown and Michael Bublé at the Warner party.

The JUNO Awards brought in over $10 million in economic impact to the City of Vancouver and saw over 5000 visitors to our region. It was a smashing success (and fun too).

The Peak Performance Project

No sooner were the JUNO Awards wrapped, but we launched the Peak Performance Project. This project was developed between The Peak FM (Jim Pattison Broadcasting) and Music BC to help develop 20 artists per year for seven years. It forms about half of the $12 million CCD pledge that the Peak made to the CRTC to help secure their broadcast license.  The program saw the Top 20 artists put through a gruelling weeklong music boot camp (business, performance, marketing, songwriting). Then each artist was given $3500 to spend on recording, marketing and promotion. The Top 20 bands also played a concert series in October 2009 at the Cellar to capacity audiences. The artists were also given challenges to complete all of which leading to the grand prize announcement on December 17, 2009 where The Left, Bend Sinister and We Are The City were awarded $275,000.00 between them. The first, second and third place allocations will be made on January 22, 2010 at the Commodore Ballroom. Then we are right back to year #2!

All of the artists grew and we were very proud to see the development that the program promised. As an incredible spin off, we also saw the growth of a music community around the Peak Performance Project. Artists working together, touring together, marketing together and generally helping each other out. With so much in common, we hope that the relationships started by the Peak Performance project will last for years to come.

Funding Cuts

The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. While we had a record breaking budget and huge successes in 2009, we also came up against the global economic downturn. The recession became a very good excuse for starting to cut Provincial Funding. Even though funding to the arts has been shown to return $1.36 in tax revenue for every dollar invested and a 6:1 return on investment overall and even though every Province in Canada and the Federal government retained or increased funding to the arts – the BC Government cut arts funding by over 50%. The result to Music BC was a 100% cut in operating funds and a 50% cut in program funding. While we were lucky to keep part of the MITAP program, the cuts hit us hard. Staffing was immediately reduced to 3 from 4 people – which will impact on our ability to deliver the level of services that we want for our members.

I challenge all Music BC members and supporters to make it a new year’s resolution in 2010 to fight for the reinstatement of arts funding in BC – specifically for Music!

Music BC  Programs and Events

Canadian Music Week Showcase

Once again, the Music BC showcase was a main attraction at the CMW conference. We were very lucky to be able to showcase Mother Mother, Mani Khaira, We Are The City, Dan Mangan and the Painted Birds. It was a sold-out show and CMW was buzzing about the bands that performed. The event was sponsored in part by The Peak FM and The Georgia Straight.

Career Development Series:

Vancouver

Get in the Van w/Rob Wright, Aaron Schubert, Lara Farcasan – touring tips

Making Friends with the Media w/Grant Lawrence – an incredible overview of creating an effective media plan.

Working Musician w/Abe Laboriel Jr, Pat Steward – the working musician

Your Music in Film, TV & Video w/Alicen Schneider, Rudy Chung – music supervisors from LA.

BC

Artswells Festival

Kelowna SOCAN Info Session

Kelowna – Making Friends with the Media w/Grant Lawrence

Kelowna – Touring tips & Tricks – Rob Wright

Charitable Foundation

Burt Harris Memorial Scholarship – we gave out over $10,000 in scholarship funds for private and college education donated by Tegan and Sara.

Raised funds for donated Guitars to Spring Valley School, Kelowna. Sale of the Neil Young Gibson Les Paul and a Merritt Music main stage guitar helped towards our goal of donating 30 guitars to the school. With additional help from Gibson/Epiphone guitars, we anticipate delivering all 30 guitars in early 2010.

eNews

Successful year, with featured artist of the week and active submissions for news. Enews goes out every Wednesday afternoon. This service has become an essential link to our members.

Kelowna Office

Due to the generous contributions from the Habitat in Kelowna we were able to launch our Kelowna office. We have so far held info sessions, meetings with members, and created a resource center.

Compilation CD

Our annual compilation for great BC music went out again. Featuring such artists as Said the Whale, Hey Ocean!, Dan Mangan, Delhi 2 Dublin, Alex Cuba, The Left and many more, the CD was promoted at MIDEM, the JUNO Awards, The Grammy Awards, SXSW, Canadian Music Week.

Attorney General MACAR Project

We worked with the Attorney General’s office to create a Case Against Racism CD. The music was BC based world and independent artists. The artwork was created by BC elementary school children.

SchMusic BC Networking Parties

Our SchMusic BC events were held at the Biltmore and Media Club in Vancouver, Lucky Bar in Victoria, and the Habitat in Kelowna. These events have grown into “must attend” parties to connect with local industry and artists. We plan on keeping these events alive and well going into 2010.

Streaming Music Site Updates (www.musicfrombc.com)

After the Film and Television workshop, we took new submissions for streaming Mp3’s for shopping to music supervisors around the world. This program is still growing and we hope to be able to expand and improve it in 2010.

Video Game Licensing

Music BC members were successful in placing music in the SEGA official Olympic Video Game. We were approached by SEGA to help facilitate the connection of artists and the video producers. This was a great opportunity, which lead to some awesome placements.

CCMA Seminar

We were happy to have been able to secure Heather Ostertag, President and CEO of FACTOR, for an afternoon session at Long & McQuade during the CCMAs held in Vancouver September 2009. This was a standing room only event, which helped a lot of artists, labels and managers get straight answers from some hard questions.

WCMA’s

Brandon, Manitoba hosted the 2009 WCMAs. The event went off very well. The conference and festival were well attended. The awards shows went over very well. Highlights included amazing performances by Loreena McKennitt and Delhi 2 Dublin. 2010 will bring the event to Kelowna, BC were we hope to host the best WCMAs ever.

Looking forward, we have year 2 of the Peak Performance Project, a new Career Development Series, the Kelowna WCMAs and much more. 2010 is already looking like an exciting year for Music BC and its members.

Happy New Year!

Bob D’Eith

Executive Director

Music BC