A music festival which still promotes homegrown music

While SXSW is no longer selling Austin artists to the world, Canadian Music Week does sell Canadian music to the world.

TheStar.com, 3/8/07 - Facing the music: "For the past four or five years, though, Canadian Music Week has increasingly taken on a more international character. Not so much in terms of the festival programming, which still tends to be an onslaught of domestic talent broken by the occasional high-profile import whose tour routing conveniently coincides with the first week of March, but in the number of talent seekers hopping on planes to visit Toronto from abroad during the last, embittered days of the Canadian winter.

'It's certainly a showcase for Canadian talent, but since Canadian talent has become so hot and so revered around the world there are more and more people coming here to see what the next big thing is,' says [CRTC president Neill] Dixon. 'We have 25 countries coming this year. They're out every night, basically scouting the clubs.

'They're in from all over. It's unbelievable how many people have travelled to come to this thing. And they're here to do business, as well.'

... There's always an awful lot of godawful stuff on the program, yes – this year's CMW roster is teeming with hilariously wretched band names (Four Day Hombre, Canteen Knockout, Ubiquitous Synergy Seeker) that usually signify hilariously wretched bands – but there's also always a discovery or two to be made.

Canadian Music Week has experienced such an influx of international travellers betting their expense accounts on that fact, anyway, that organizers decided to set up an 'International Marketplace' four years ago to facilitate hook-ups between Canadian labels and foreign executives eager to license their tunes.

While the layoff-stricken majors are crying doom and gloom, the indies are striking deals all over the place.

Thus, on its 25th anniversary, CMW finds itself less in the business of selling Canadians to Canadians, but satisfying the demand for Canadians from other points on the globe.

'They're not coming here to sell stuff because we're only two per cent of the world market,' says Dixon.

'We're in the shadow of a 38-per-cent market. But we are disproportionately exporting talent to the size of our market. So that's why they're here. They're not here to sell us stuff, they're here to buy stuff.'"

Canada
Canadian Music Week
music festival