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Posts Tagged ‘Arts Funding’

This is the third in a series of posts highlighting the merits of governement supporting artistic endeavours.  I talked about Canada’s government funded public broadcaster, and more specifically CBC Radio 3 here and about Canadian Content, or CanCon broadcasting rules here.  This post will look at direct subsidies for Canadian art, music in particular.

There are many aspects of the social sphere where it has been decided that to allow ‘pure’ market forces to exert complete control over these areas would lead to undesired consequences. Policing, firefighting, emergency paramedics, K-12 education and health care (as long as you are not in the US) all fall into this category.  Arts and culture do as well.  Canada’s close proximity and interconnectedness to the US, the worlds largest cultural exporter, make this a necessity; if our artists were unsupported by the government, the dynamics of the 300 million strong marketplace to the south would trump our 30 million every time.  Thankfully our government still supports our artists and musicians.  The primary mechanism for directing public funding towards Canadian musicians is the Canadian Music Fund.

The Canadian music industry includes a wide range of creators and entrepreneurs who create, produce and market original and diverse Canadian music. To help the industry meet new challenges, the Government created the Canada Music Fund. The Canada Music Fund (CMF) is the primary tool implementing the three major objectives of the Canadian Sound Recording Policy, which are:

• to enhance Canadians access to a diverse range of Canadian music choices through existing and emerging media;
• to increase the opportunities available for Canadian music artists and entrepreneurs to make a significant and lasting contribution to Canadian cultural expression; and,
• to ensure that Canadian music artists and entrepreneurs have the skills, know-how and tools to succeed in a global and digital environment.

One of the central vehicles for delivering funding is the group FACTOR, a not for profit organization that has “been managing federal funds since the inception of the Sound Recording Development Program in 1986 (now known as the Canada Music Fund Council).”  FACTOR has grown considerably since it’s inception and aides musicians in many facets:

Whether an artist is looking to record a demo, full length sound recording, market and promote an already existing album or showcase and tour domestically and internationally, funding is available. FACTOR supports many facets of the infrastructure which must be in place in order for artists and Canadian labels to progress into the international arena.

FACTOR started out with an annual budget of $200,000 and is currently providing in excess of $14 million annually to support the Canadian music industry.

• Innovation Stiffling Government Aids Groundbreaking Artistry To follow up on an earlier posting that contended that government sponsored initiatives are capable of producing innovation in broadcasting I thought it was also worth highlighting our CanCon radio requirements and the Canadian Music...
• How Wrong Is It To Contractually Require Promoters To Not Denigrate (Your Product)? A short while back on the CBC Radio3 blog, host Tariq Hussein linked to a blog post by Carey Mercer, the lead singer of the band Frog Eyes. In this post he was lamenting the...

• How To Kill The Music Industry During The Pirate Bay trial, the music industry placed the blame for the decline in their revenues squarely on the shoulders of file-sharers. Their logic...
• 2009 Search Engine Ranking Factors At the 2009 SMX advanced conference in Seattle Rand Fishkin of SEOMOZ gave a very interesting presentation on the factors that he and his colleagues...