Canadian downloading is killing music week

Canadian Music Week continues its annual tradition of putting downtown rock club showcases, a trade show geared to independent recording artists, and conference for the radio and record business under the same quilt, even though those assorted sectors have become increasingly strange bedfellows. The theoretical transformation of a garage band into a corporate-supported touring act, front-racked in chain record stores and dominating the airwaves, fueled many dreams – and expense accounts – through the 1990s. Naturally, the digital music millennium is creating different scenarios altogether, even if Canadian Content regulations established in 1971 haven’t followed suit; the decision on satellite radio marked the first time the CRTC responded to this new paradigm, determining that a couple of all-CanCon music channels would suffice amidst Sirius and XM’s menus of a few dozen American offerings, so long as a share of revenues get funneled into supporting homegrown musicians – a longtime requirement for terrestrial broadcasters, too. A formal review of commercial radio policy is slated for mid-May, where issues related to the internet, shifting demographics and global media marketplace will be grappled with. And despite the number of stations eager to expose new music being reduced each day, the expectation is that CanCon levels on FM are more likely to go up than down, the result of a music industry given federal license to keep radio on a leash. The surviving members of both camps are huddling around the bar at the Royal York Hotel this weekend, wishing for the good ol’ days before anti-piracy lobbyists of the Canadian Recording Industry Association would use this event as a window to release grim statistics about how file-sharing is out of control in Canada. Meanwhile, a majority stake in paid downloading service Puretracks was handed off to Bell Canada – obviously with mobile device distribution in mind – after failing to develop any web-based enthusiasm for its Microsoft-only platform. The arrival of Apple’s iTunes Music Store stripped Canadian music mandarins of a chance to wield dismal sales as evidence that nobody wanted to buy music online. Yet, could giving away Puretracks via Kraft Dinner 12-packs and Big Mac combos make music seem any less valuable?