Canadian Musician Podcast NWC & Canadian Musician Magazine

This week, Canadian Musician Editor-in-Chief Mike Raine is joined by Morgan Hayduk and Andrew Batey, co-founders and co-CEOs of Beatdapp, a Canada-based company that is tackling the huge issue of streaming fraud. Morgan and Andrew reveal why they think the common estimate of $300 million per year in lost royalties is actually too conservative when it comes to music streaming fraud, and how their team of data scientist and engineers uses cross-platform analysis to expose fraudulent streams in the DSPs’ data. They also discuss how the fraudsters are operating, why it’s nearly impossible for a streaming service to find all fraudulent streams on their own, and the delicate politics involved in tackling the problem. This is a fascinating and important conversation that impacts everyone involved in the business of music rights.

On the show this week, Canadian Musician Editor-in-Chief Mike Raine chats with Fabiana Claure, a concert pianist, entrepreneur, and business coach for musicians. Fabiana is also the co-founder of the Superior Music Academy in Miami and the former director of the Music Business and Entrepreneurship program at the University of North Texas. She tells Mike about why she left that tenure-track position to launch her current company and program, called the Musician’s Profit Umbrella. With it, she’s helped hundreds of musicians create businesses, gain employment opportunities, and launch their careers so, she says, they can live “the life of artistic realization, financial freedom, impact and fulfillment they crave.” For Fabiana, the goal is to help experienced musicians work smarter, not harder so that they can get out of the trap of simply exchanging time for money.

As an acclaimed and sought-after record producer and recording engineer, Kallie Marie has witnessed first-hand the opportunities and challenges that women in her chosen field face every day. In her new book, ‘Conversations with Women in Music Production’, Kallie interviews some of the most renowned women in audio and music production to reveal how they’ve navigated their careers. Ranging across both the personal and professional, the accounts collected contain varied viewpoints as well as many shared experiences, encompassing such topics as diversity, childcare, healthcare, pay equity, and the ways technological change is reshaping the industry landscape.
In this episode of the podcast, Kallie joins Canadian Musician Editor-in-Chief Mike Raine to share her own experiences as a woman in the professional recording industry, and what she heard and learned from others while writing her book.

In late June, the Canada's Parliament passed Bill C-11, commonly known as the Online Streaming Act. This legislation is something music industry groups like SOCAN, CIMA, and Music Canada have long lobbied for, and it could have a major impact on the country’s music, TV, and film industries. In broad terms, it updates the federal Broadcasting Act in order to apply a new version of CanCon regulations to streaming companies like Spotify, YouTube, and Netflix, and bring them within the CRTC’s regulatory regime. Current CanCon regulations have been in places since the early 1970s and force Canadian content quotas and an arts funding system on traditional Canadian broadcasters. Though the broad goals of Bill C-11 are made clear (which include significant monetary contributions from DSPs into Canadian arts funding bodies like FACTOR and greater promotion of Canadian artists on the platforms), significant parts of how this will be implemented is still widely unknown. And so, this week Mike brings back beloved broadcaster and music industry expert Alan Cross to chat about all this and what it could mean for both streaming companies and the music industry in Canada.

This week, Editor-in-Chief Mike Raine shares is entire conversation with heralded singer-songwriter Allison Russell, which was done for the cover story in the latest issue of Canadian Musician magazine. Not since Tracy Chapman has a Black woman taken the Americana world by storm like Russell has with debut solo album, Outside Child. But Russell is no newbie, as she’s two decades into her highly-regarded career. She began with the Vancouver-based folk group, Po’ Girl, then spent the last decade-plus touring relentlessly with her partner, JT Nero, in the group Birds of Chicago. But it’s the lushness and power of Outside Child that has catapulted her to stardom over the last year. The album has been a hit despite, or maybe because of, its difficult subject matter, which tackles Russell’s childhood of abuse at the hands of a racist adoptive father.

Outside Child was released in May 2021, in part thanks to country star Brandi Carlile. Now, a little over a year later, Russell is contemplating what it means to be playing sold out shows, to have received three Grammy Award nominations, and have won a Juno Award for Contemporary Roots Album of the Year, a Canadian Folk Music Award for Contemporary Album of the Year, and the two top honours at the 2022 International Folk Music Awards. Plus, she’s currently nominated for Album and Song of the Year at the 2022 Americana Music Awards.

On this week’s podcast, we have a unique conversation where rising pop singer-songwriter Mathew V is joined by his influential agent, Tom Kemp, senior VP at the Feldman Agency. Together they discuss their respective career trajectories and how they’re working together to foster Matthew V’s rise. Having these two together, a rising artist and veteran agent, provides a very fascinating perspective on the current live music industry and how an artist works with their agent and label to build a career. Along the way, with Canadian Musician Editor-in-Chief Mike Raine, they also get into some fun conversation about stage banter, livestreaming, and more.