Canadian Heritage committee  I think as someone who's done A and R, which is artists and repertoire, for pretty much 20 years of my music career—in other words, finding artists—if I knew exactly the answer to that question, I would be a millionaire. But, I get where you're going with this. I think one of th

Canadian Heritage committee  Some international artists in the past and currently—Rolling Stones, AC/DC, bands that are massive historical bands—don't make their recordings available for those streaming services, but they are in the fortunate position to be able to say “you can't have it”. In many cases, som

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, but it's important to note too that, in the case of 10 or 15 years ago, you might have had to spend $40,000 or $50,000 on a music video, which of course was a fairly hefty expense; however, you would also sell hundreds of thousands of records, so it was much easier to recoup

Canadian Heritage committee  Music has never been, I don't think, ever more enjoyed than it is right now. That's the biggest irony of it all. If ever music was the soundtrack of people's lives, it is currently right now. The problem is very few people are making money on it. There's going to be a long stopga

Canadian Heritage committee  I think in the early stages we need to encourage the funders to focus some energy on the.... I don't want to say they should divert all of the funds towards touring, because that doesn't allow them to continue to make the recordings that are the stem of all of the other things we

Canadian Heritage committee  If you want me to break down the payment, you have two streams of thought. One would be an artist signs to a major label. Without getting into the finances of how that deal is initially instigated, how the payment breaks down is rather simple. Once the artist recoups their mone

Canadian Heritage committee  There's certainly a higher echelon of artists who are making a living out of the music industry, but the reality is that probably 80% or more of artists are not making a living solely based on the music industry. They might have a cottage industry business on the side that's not

Canadian Heritage committee  First, I want to thank you very much for allowing me the opportunity to speak to the committee today. In my 28 years in the music industry I've been lucky enough to see the music business from many sides. I spent 12 years with the major record label Universal Music. Additionally