Canadian Heritage committee  To be totally honest, I don't know the exact answer to that, except that maybe a lot of it is smoke and mirrors. People see you on MuchMusic and think you're rich. They think you're a millionaire. They think you have a mansion. We've had three number one singles on MuchMusic, and I'm still living in a basement suite of my in-laws' house.

Canadian Heritage committee  For me, I would say the three main revenue sources are doing concerts, touring, but more than that would be songwriting, so getting royalties from songwriting, as well as ACTRA RACS. Those are probably the three main sources for income for me personally.

Canadian Heritage committee  Well, our biggest-selling song was G-Get Up and Dance!, which sold more than 120,000 copies in Canada. Then we had a couple of other songs that went gold. In terms of physical copies of CDs, I don't know whether we sold much more than 20,000 physical copies of each album.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, I would say that for a massive hit such as Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen there will be something like 200,000 to 300,000 singles sold. G-Get Up and Dance! went to number two on Top 40 radio in Canada, and that song sold about 120,000 to 130,000 copies.

Canadian Heritage committee  I'm sorry; are you saying...?

Canadian Heritage committee  Our record label generally gets grants and moneys to help support with touring, making albums. We generally weren't too focused on getting the money ourselves, because generally the record label would help support with that type of stuff. When you're first starting out, record labels usually help with that, but after a few years they tend to cut out helping with that stuff.

Canadian Heritage committee  I would think probably around three or four years, because oftentimes it's year to year. Last year we got stung with a big tax bill because the year before we had a really good year. The problem is we have to pay that off within the next year. It's hard. That's part of the reason that I had to go back to doing concrete.

Canadian Heritage committee  I think the income averaging thing is really good too.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thanks, Brad. Like other self-employed people working in Canada's cultural industries, recording artists like me tend to experience sharp swings in our annual income. Our earnings spike when we release an album and tour in support of it, but between recording projects, revenue drops significantly.