Evidence of meeting #13 for Canadian Heritage in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was artists.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Director General, Cultural Industries, Department of Canadian Heritage
The CRTC has a definition for Canadian content. It has set up a system of four—
Liberal
Stéphane Dion Liberal Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC
I have seven minutes only.
You seem to be saying that the same thing was done for 2012 and 2001.
Director General, Cultural Industries, Department of Canadian Heritage
Liberal
Stéphane Dion Liberal Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC
Canada is the third largest exporter of musical talent. The United States is the largest and the second largest is—
Director General, Cultural Industries, Department of Canadian Heritage
—Great Britain.
Liberal
Stéphane Dion Liberal Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC
Have we been third for a long time or is it more recent?
Director General, Cultural Industries, Department of Canadian Heritage
We have been either second or third for a decade now.
Liberal
Stéphane Dion Liberal Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC
That is because our songs are in English and therefore they are being played. Our position is stable; we are third, but it is not an improvement.
Director General, Cultural Industries, Department of Canadian Heritage
It is not an improvement, but it is not a loss either.
Liberal
Stéphane Dion Liberal Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC
I agree.
I would like to talk about the information we have received from the Library of Parliament analyst.
The document says that the market value of Canadian music sales totalled $353 million in 2012, a decrease of 19.7% over 2008. That is almost one-fifth. There was a drop in CD sales of 46%. Even though the sales of digital recordings doubled, the fact remains that there is still a shortfall of one-fifth. That is not in your document.
Director, Music Policy and Programs, Department of Canadian Heritage
You are talking about revenue. Over the past decade—
Liberal
Director, Music Policy and Programs, Department of Canadian Heritage
—the market shares we use to see the results for the Canada music fund are the value of all the sales in Canada. As a result, according to our data, there is a constant 26%. There was a peak of 28%, but the value has held steady at 26%.
Liberal
Stéphane Dion Liberal Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC
Yes, but if it is 26%, and the 100% is decreasing by a fifth…That is not good news.
The fact that it is holding steady at 26% is good news, but the fact that it has gone down by a fifth in four years is troubling.
Director General, Cultural Industries, Department of Canadian Heritage
In terms of revenue from album sales, the pie was quite big in the 1980s, but it has got smaller since.
The figures are probably good. We do not invent figures like that.
Liberal
Stéphane Dion Liberal Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC
Is that because of the technology or the difficulty in having copyright respected?
Director, Music Policy and Programs, Department of Canadian Heritage
The music world is being turned on its head. We are paying a lot of attention to the level of consumption and to the way in which music is being consumed. There are a lot of platforms. They provide new opportunities and new challenges at the same time.
Twenty years ago, we sold music products linearly. Consumption was overwhelmingly on physical media. People bought discs and income was earned. Today, to get the equivalent of that income in a live-streaming world, we need a number of—
Liberal
Stéphane Dion Liberal Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC
If it has dropped by a fifth in four years, you have to be alert to that fact. But I cannot find anything about it in your presentation. What has to be done?
The committee is trying to find out how to adjust government assistance in a world where sales have dropped by a fifth in four years.
Director General, Cultural Industries, Department of Canadian Heritage
Mr. Dion, the shrinking pie phenomenon is not unique to Quebec or to Canada. No one has found the magic recipe yet, not even the multinationals. A few years ago, there were seven of them. Now there are three. So there have been mergers, acquisitions, and so on.
Music entrepreneurs are trying to find a new business model centred on an artist. Their artists are their currency, in a way. More and more, music revenue comes from tours and merchandising, the T-shirts, the caps and things like that. People are trying to find other sources of revenue because the pie is getting smaller in terms of album sales or even singles.
Yes, it is a concern, but some artists make it work incredibly well.
Conservative
Ray Boughen Conservative Palliser, SK
Mr. Chair, let me add my voice of welcome to the panel for being understanding of our responsibility to vote on various issues. Thank you to the witnesses for staying with us.
In looking at the information we have had circulated, we see the current distribution model of the Canada music fund, and we believe the fund is achieving its objectives. How are the objectives evaluated? Is there some measure we use to determine whether we're on target or not? What would that be?
Director, Music Policy and Programs, Department of Canadian Heritage
The key result for us is to look at the market share, and in Canada the domestic market share. Again, this is to look at the overall sales within Canada. As we've just pointed out, we see that despite all the challenges that are occurring in the music industry, this is right now at 26%. We also look at different results from the projects on a constant basis every year so that we can report to Parliament. We're looking at the number of albums in diverse genres that are produced, recorded, and marketed. If you produce a certain level of albums for the market and you have sales in Canada and internationally, it goes back to the market share, and then you know that what you do in terms of projects is working.
We also look at the showcases, as we pointed out in the deck. We can see that doing the showcasing domestically and in other countries gives a chance to the artist to be signed, to be seen by buyers, so that they have tours, so that they have more dates and they can do more touring. We also see a net increase in the royalties that are collected by SOCAN. We can see that internationally there are more royalties than ever, which is another sign that it's working domestically and abroad.
Director General, Cultural Industries, Department of Canadian Heritage
If I may add to that, we do, as part of the public policy development process, evaluate those programs from time to time. Normally it's every five years. There's an ongoing evaluation on the objectives of the program and whether they are met, and we get recommendations on ways to improve.
The last one was in 2007. We have one...if you had started your review in three months, you would have had the results. We're just about to finish it. It's done independently from my policy shop. We have mechanisms to evaluate if objectives are met or not.
Conservative
Ray Boughen Conservative Palliser, SK
With all the artists that are out there, who selects the artists for performances like those at the Juno awards? How are those artists selected? Can you share that with us?
