Today, Music Canada and the Digital Media Association (DIMA) have jointly filed the below letter to the CRTC following their recent engagement sessions on Canadian content for audio services.
Re: Engagement sessions on Canadian content
We are writing to you today as part of the recent engagement sessions on Canadian content held by the CRTC from Sept 11-18. Collectively, our organizations and their members took part in the meetings held on September 11, 12, and 17.
At the end of each session we were encouraged to write to the CRTC with further thoughts or clarifications on the sessions. With this in mind, we write to you today to reinforce an important message shared throughout the consultations: radio and audio streaming are not the same.
Out of context, it might seem odd for the largest streaming services and major music labels in Canada to write to a regulator asserting a truism, but we believe that the recent workshops have made this necessary. From the discussion guide to the moderated questions, there was a clear attempt to place the continuation of radio regulations on audio streaming services as an obvious next step.
We do not agree.
Today’s radio regulations were carefully crafted for Canada’s radio environment. One that is shaped by our vast geography, linguistic duality, and a willingness in an analogue system to make decisions about what is available to Canadian listeners. They also reflect the limitations of the medium: a finite number of hours, increasingly centralized programming, and a live broadcast format, and relatively small number of recordings that radio broadcasts.
Streaming is none of these things. Being driven in terms of each consumer’s individual interest and activity, it represents nearly infinite hours of listening, a vast catalogue of recordings, a plethora of languages, and has broken down not just physical geography but international borders as well. Three of the top 10 songs streamed in India in 2022 were by Canadian artists – a fact that would be inconceivable to the founders of our terrestrial broadcasting system.
Not only has streaming allowed Canadians to reach the world in ways previously unimaginable, streaming has allowed Canadian artists with no home in the traditional radio system to be found by their Canadian and international fans. This has led to higher levels of play on streaming for women and racially diverse artists compared to Canadian radio.
We ask that as you move forward implementing the Online Streaming Act, you think of the streaming services and their interactions with Canadians for what they are today and not as a proxy to the broadcasting system of the 1900s.
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About Music Canada
Music Canada is the trade association representing Canada’s major record labels: Sony Music Entertainment Canada, Universal Music Canada and Warner Music Canada. Like its members, Music Canada is a partner to the industry, working with artists, independent labels, publishers, platforms, associations and others, in advancing forward-looking policies to ensure a dynamic and successful Canadian music ecosystem which returns value to music creators.
For further information: Regan Reid, Music Canada, rreid@musiccanada.com, (416) 462-1485
About DIMA
DIMA represents the world’s leading audio streaming companies and streaming innovators. Our mission is to promote and protect the ability of music fans to legally engage with creative content whenever and wherever they want it, and for artists to more easily reach longtime fans and make new ones.
