EL MODELO DE LAS ACTIVIDADES COMO RESPUESTA A LOS SISTEMAS DE GESTIÓN TRADICIONALES

Canadians value music: 70 per cent identify it as an important part of their lives, and 46 per cent buy music on a regular basis (DFSP 1999: 3). Reflecting this, the

Canadian music industry is economically significant; in 1996, Canadians spent C$107 per person on recordings, compared with C$76 on books (ibid.). In addition, popular Canadian artists such as Celine Dion, Bryan Adams, Alanis Morissette, Shania Twain, and Robert Charlebois are the country’s best-known cultural ambassa-dors abroad.

The history of the Canadian music industry has been shaped largely by its rela-tionship to the international marketplace, especially its proximity to the dominant United States market for popular music. During the 1980s and into the 1990s, the Canadian music industry was dominated by the local branches of the majors.

The eight largest record companies in Canada are foreign-owned; 89 per cent of the revenues from the Canadian domestic market goes to multinationals. Their interest in Canadian music is restricted to those recordings which are marketed across the continent. This preference also shapes current government programs for subsidising domestic recording. All other recording remains economically, spatially, and discursively marginal.

(Berland 1988; see also Robinson et al. 1991: chap. 5)

Economies of scale applied to production meant that indigenous product was far more costly to produce and frequently had inferior production values compared with imports (largely) from the United States. With record distribution also dominated by the majors, and commercial radio frequently tied to US programme formats and broadcast sound quality, the Canadian industry and musicians had only a small market share: in 1988 the independents received approximately 11 per cent of national revenues from record sales. One consequence of this situation was that only a small percentage of music bought in Canada originated there, even when it was made by Canadian artists (e.g. Bryan Adams). This economic situation sat uneasily with the historical Canadian concern to encourage nationhood and a cultural iden-tity via communications technology, while at the same time resisting the intrusion of American media and messages. These concerns have pushed the State to the fore-front in media and cultural policy (see Dorland 1996).

The Canadian music industry as a whole was considerably stronger by the mid-1990s. Recordings generated substantial economic activity: retail sales in Canada totalled C$1.3 billion in 1997, while the royalties paid to Canadian songwriters, composers and publishers (as public performance rights) totalled C$49 million in 1997, up from C$34 million in 1993 (DFSP 1999). While this overall picture is impressive, the historical dichotomy remained: Canadian firms earn about 90 per cent of their revenue from selling Canadian-content recordings, while 88 per cent of the revenues of foreign-controlled firms comes from selling recordings made from imported masters. Foreign firms have five times the revenue, eighteen times the

profit, ten times the long-term assets, and sixteen times the contributed surplus and retained earnings of Canadian-controlled firms (Task Force 1996).

It should also be acknowledged, however, that the major’s are not simply parasitic here. Brian Robertson, President of CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association), stresses the important investment in Canadian talent by the multi-nationals (majors), now around C$40 million a year in Canadian Content production.

‘This has escalated tremendously in the last decade, and represents a huge investment per year in Canadian music and artists and their recordings’ (author interview, July 1999). Canadian brewing giant Seagram’s takeover of MCA in 1995 (and Polygram in 1998) meant that a major recording company was now based in Canada, but as yet this appears to have had little impact on the development of local repertoire.

Yet as Straw (1993, 1996) has observed, while the general picture of a margin-alised local sound-recording industry remains valid, contradictions are now evident.

On the one hand, there is the increased international visibility and success of Canadian artists/music within the global sound-recording industry, although these artists frequently record in the United States, for US-based companies; e.g. Bryan Adams, Alanis Morissette, Shania Twain. On the other hand, there is also an increased share of the local market for music of Canadian content, with commer-cially significant sales for several locally based performers, including Bare Naked Ladies, Our Lady Peace, Red Rodeo, and Sarah McLachlan. In 1998, Our Lady Peace’s CD Clumsy sold over 800,000 copies in Canada, along with well over half a million copies in the USA; Bare Naked Ladies had a top ten Billboard single (‘One Week’), and their album Stunt reached sales of three million (Chauncey 1999: 57).

Artists working in non-pop or rock genres are also having a national impact: singer and jazz pianist Diana Krall attained platinum sales (100,000 in Canada) with her CD Love Scenes, and her latest CD, When I Look in Your Eyes, went gold (50,000) on the day of its release in June 1999; both releases also gained significant exposure and sales outside of Canada.

At the same time, the popular music market has changed dramatically, with the splintering of ‘mainstream rock’, once the dominant genre, into a wide range of genre styles and performers, along with the willingness of the major record companies to market/exploit these. These trends have created uncertainty as to the future role and status of Canada’s small, locally based firms, which have traditionally nurtured and been economically dependent on new musical styles. In other words, reflecting glocalisation, the relative market positions and relationship of ‘majors’ and ‘inde-pendents’ in the Canadian market has changed (Straw 1996). The growth of foreign markets has made artist development in Canada more globally oriented. The Canadian branches of the Majors, and Canadian owned independent labels such as Nettwerk Productions, Attic Music Group, True North, and Marquis Classics are increasingly looking to develop artists with international appeal. Randy Lennox,

president of Universal Music Group (Canada) states: ‘We’re watching specific market trends worldwide when signing an artist today’ (LeBlanc 1999).

In the midst of these shifts, positive Government policy toward the local music industry appeared to be more necessary than ever, a view shared by the comprehen-sive and influential Task Force Report, on The Future of the Canadian Music Industry (Task Force 1996). The Task Force was asked to develop proposals that would ensure that the industry could maintain its central role in promoting Canada’s cultural iden-tity by providing an increasing choice of Canadian music. Objectives set for the industry were to maintain its ability to compete in Canada and abroad; to be adequately compensated for use of its copyrighted material; and to benefit from new technologies. The Task Force concluded: ‘While cultural objectives should provide the basis for music industry policy, measures that strengthen the creation, perform-ance, production, distribution and marketing of Canadian music will also generate important economic benefits’ (Task Force 1996). The Task Force report was a comprehensive document and here I concentrate on only two aspects of it: the oper-ation and future of the ‘Can Con’ reguloper-ations, administered by the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), and the Sound Recording Development Program (SRDP).

The CRTC and Can Con The CRTC was established by Parliament in 1968. The Broadcasting Act requires the CRTC to ensure that each ‘broadcasting undertaking … shall make maximum use, and in no case less than predominant use, of Canadian creative and other resources in the creation and presentation of programming’ (unless the specialised nature of the service makes it impracticable). The CRTC has responsibility for estab-lishing classes of broadcasting licences, the allocation of broadcast licences, making broadcasting regulations, and the holding of public hearings in respect of such matters.

In pursuit of this goal, a Canadian Content quota on AM radio was introduced in 1971, and extended to FM radio in 1976. These quotas took into account particular station airplay formats, and expected a reasonably even distribution of Canadian selections throughout the day and through the broadcast week. What constitutes

‘Canadian’ was established by the MAPLE test, in which at least two of the audio components of a recording must be:

‘M’ – music is composed by a Canadian

‘A’ – artist (principal performer) is a Canadian

‘P’ – performance/production is in Canada

‘L’ – lyrics are written by a Canadian

Can Con, as the local content requirements came to be known, proved controversial, but had an undeniably positive impact on the Canadian recording industry:

That simple regulation was a watershed. It was the expression of a protectionist policy designed to allow Canadian musicians to be heard in their own country, The overall effect of the regulations has been the creation of an active, vigorous, self-supporting, and surprisingly creative industry – one that hardly existed prior to the regulations.

(Flohel 1990: 497)

It seems to be generally agreed that, while the current group of Canadian interna-tional stars would have ‘made it’ anyway, their early careers received a significant impetus from the airplay guaranteed by Can Con. Further, and perhaps more impor-tantly, the quota allowed a ‘middle’ group of performers to make an impact – and a living – within the Canadian industry: ‘there’s a whole lot of middle ground Canadian artists who are fabulous acts and Can Con has helped to ensure that they get the airplay that allows them to become the stars that they have become in Canada and, in many cases, nowhere else in the world’ (Doug Pringle, director of programming at Rawlco Communications, responsible for a number of newer radio stations, cited in Melhuish 1999: 73).

In early 1999, after a series of public hearings and a review of radio policy by the CRTC, the Canadian content requirement was increased to 35 per cent. This change did not indicate a ‘failure’ of the previous requirement, but was a recognition that the local industry was now in a strong enough position to provide sufficient acceptable recordings to meet such an increase.

The Sound Recording Development Program (SRDP)

The SRDP was created in 1986 to provide support to Canadian-owned companies for the production of Canadian audio and video music and radio programmes and to support marketing, international touring, and business development. This recog-nised that it was necessary to assist the industry to enable it to provide the local content required under the CRTC regulations. With the exception of the support provided to Specialized Music Production, which is administered by the Canada Council, SRDP support is the responsibility of two organisations, FACTOR and MusicAction, based on an agreement with the Department of Canadian Heritage.

The 1991 evaluation of the SRDP found that it had had a very positive effect on the sound recording industry, but that its resources (funding was initially C$5 million) were inadequate to significantly strengthen the independent sector of the industry and, in particular, that it provided too little support to marketing and

distribution. This view was confirmed by the Task Force report, which regarded the scheme as now substantially under-funded: ‘A major concern for both English and French language industries is the inadequacy of the resources available to support the marketing of recordings by Canadian artists’ (Task Force 1996).

The Task Force (1996) recommended that the resources of the Sound Recording Development Program should be increased immediately to C$10 million annually and sustained at that level for a period of five years, but it was not until late 1999 that Government policy began to address this, and a comprehensive review of the programme was begun. Speaking in 1999, Brian Chater, President of CIRPA (the Canadian Independent Record Producers Association) emphasised there remained a pressing need to get ‘serious structural funding’ in the local industry:

The music business has become very much like the film business; you have to have a lot of bucks to play the game, and a lot of the time it won’t work anyway. Now if you don’t invest three or four hundred grand on each project, nobody thinks you’re serious. Do five of those and you’ve spent a couple of million dollars. The reality with project funding is that you’re always scrambling from A to B trying to pay the bills with the project money. What we want to see indies have access to is structural funding, so that you can operate a company rather than do projects.

(Melhuish 1999: 79; also discussed in author interview, July 1999)

The Canadian case raises crucial questions about the role of music as a form of discourse actively engaged in the uniting or fragmenting of a community. It presup-poses that listeners consciously identify – and identify with – specifically locally produced music. The frequent negative reaction local product provokes is an impor-tant reminder of how what counts as popular music has been identified with a particular imported form, the result of the dominance of American radio formats, music videos, and production values.

Further, it is misleading to automatically assume that local musicians embody and support a Canadian cultural nationalism in their work. Indeed, Canada itself is char-acterised by considerable cultural diversity, with strongly developed regional music scenes and idioms. Attempts to include more French language music on Canadian radio illustrate the difficulties of conflating ‘the national’ in multicultural/bilingual settings. A 1989 hearing of the CRTC led to a 1990 regulation stipulating that at least 65 per cent of the vocal music played weekly by all Francophone AM and FM radio stations, irrespective of format or market, must be French-language. The tensions this created for an industry and artists wanting to remain ‘culturally politi-cally correct’ but also needing to appeal to the larger, international market, illustrated the double-bind in which Quebec is caught. ‘Like other small nations, it feels the need to protect its local products from multinational conglomerates but

aims none the less at generating its own international hits … the debate under study goes to the very heart of this double bind’ (Grenier 1993: 124).