Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you. Good morning. My name is Gregg Terrence. I'm the president of the Canadian Independent Recording Artists' Association, also known as CIRAA. I'm also the owner of Indie Pool, a Canadian independent music aggregator with over 100,000 Canadian songs on iTunes, which work

Canadian Heritage committee  These artists exist in a precarious and important stage of Canada's talent development system, a system that CIRAA often compares to an apple orchard. The end goal of having an orchard is to pick beautiful, new apples, shine them, and distribute them domestically, and preferably

Canadian Heritage committee  CIRAA and others have attempted to modernize FACTOR. However, the bylaws dictating the institutional makeup of the FACTOR board of directors, created before the rise of the artist entrepreneur, assures us that nothing there is likely to change. Roughly half the seats are assigned

Canadian Heritage committee  Not entirely. We believe that FACTOR does a wonderful job at funding established artists, at picking fruit from the tree, shining them, bringing them to market. They know how to do that very well. The board is radio people looking for hits and the board is large music companies,

Canadian Heritage committee  So it's a small business or a large business. Currently the large businesses and large artists are very well funded. However, there is no small business strategy. Zack is a former arts entrepreneur. I'm a former arts entrepreneur. We end up becoming entrepreneurs in the music bus

Canadian Heritage committee  It's everyone including the signed artists and so on and so forth.

Canadian Heritage committee  If we run a good orchard, it's all of these pieces. You cannot ignore the fact that we need to polish apples and prepare them for the international marketplace, but there's no doubt there are many seeds created by educators and by schools and young people, and these seeds need to

Canadian Heritage committee  We are not necessarily saying additional money.

Canadian Heritage committee  We are not saying additional money, and we are not saying that—

Canadian Heritage committee  Instead of assigning all of the money to FACTOR, with their specialty being in shining apples, we believe that some of those funds should be assigned to a new organization that specializes in and has an understanding regionally and so on about independent artists and entrepreneur

Canadian Heritage committee  From the same CMF, yes. Correct. It would be nice if there was more money, of course. We think that it would certainly create fewer waves if there was more money; however, there needs to be a transition there. There needs to be a proper division of funds in order to fund the ec

Canadian Heritage committee  With regards to the early education elements, we believe strongly that.... We aren't sure what can be done, either through the CMF or federally. We're unaware, politically, of what the opportunities are. It seems very often to be a provincial issue like the work done in Alberta

Canadian Heritage committee  —or of the federal government or the music industry generally. However, it is an important priority to make sure there are lots of seeds.

Canadian Heritage committee  If I may, may I add a small comment? It's important to know that it is possible to make a living making music. However, part of our education programs should include dissuading many from doing so, as well, because not everyone can be a musician. Not everyone is talented enough.

Canadian Heritage committee  We suggest that one third be divided among artist-entrepreneurs, independent artists; that one third be set to FACTOR labels, managers, publishers for picking and shining fruit; and that one third be there for MEC, the Music Entrepreneur Component and collective initiatives, in o