Introduction
The music recording industry in Canada has played a major role in promoting Canadian music both locally and internationally. The industry has managed to do so in spite of its relatively short history in the country. In the early 20th century, the most prevalent form of musical dissemination was live performances. Musical recordings were considered inferior and many musicians made a living through live exhibitions. However, recordings gained popularity as more people adopted the radio as the primary source of entertainment.
This gave rise to the music recording industry that served artists by producing their songs and distributing them to mainstream society. Many countries including Canada developed their own music recording industry to advance their unique cultural products. The Canadian recording industry suffered from a slow start and it was only with government involvement that the industry was able to exhibit significant growth.
This paper will set out to discuss the music recording industry in Canada with a detailed outlook on the industry’s past, its present reality, and projected future. The paper will demonstrate that the industry has exhibited impressive growth in the past but it will have to adapt itself in order to remain relevant in the future of Canadian Music.
Historical Overview
The Canadian music recording industry has had an inspiring past characterized by growth and expansion. The industry can trace its rise to the 1970s when the government took on an active role in the destiny of the industry. Before 1970, the Canadian music recording industry was obscure with the government showing indifference to this aspect of Canadian cultural life. Bennet and Simon state that Canadian cultural policy-makers ignored the recording industry while attention was accorded to magazine, book, film and broadcasting industries.
Significant government involvement started with the introduction of the content requirements for radio introduced in 1971. These requirements meant that the recording industry could enjoy the benefits from the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). Goff suggests that the government’s objective in involving itself in the recording industry was to “nurture and protect the Canadian-owned industry, which accounts for most Canadian-content recordings” (70).
The rationale behind government action was that without its involvement, the music industry would not grow. The policies designed by the government were also aimed at diminishing the effects of international music on Canadian culture. Before 1970, most of the popular music played on Canadian radio was of international origin. The cultural implication of this phenomenon was that Canadian culture was being forged after the prominent international cultures.
The Canadian government began taking measures to support the recording industry in 1970. The initial measures were indirect with the most significant one being the introduction of regulations that required radio broadcasters to include a specified quota of Canadian recordings within their programming (Armstrong 12).
In subsequent years, broadcasters were required to promise to invest directly in the nurturing of local musical talent before they could be granted a license to broadcast in Canada. Government policy made it necessary for broadcasters to encourage the creations of music products by Canadians. The government also offered grants to support the industry and non-profit organizations such as the Foundation to Assist Canadian Talent on Records (FACTOR) was formed to provide financing to assist Canadian recording artists to create music (Armstrong 27).
The 1990s period was the most prosperous for the Canadian recording industry. The industry was able to select releases and promote them heavily to the national as well as international market with huge success. Government action encouraged the emergence of many recording companies, which focused on artist development activity. These labels such as Attic and Aquarius devoted resources to search for talent all over Canada. Once a promising artist was found, the recording companies worked with him/her to develop music mostly for the national scene.
Sutherland and Will assert that these recording companies left manufacturing and international marketing to the major multinational companies which had the resources necessary for such functions (148). In this period, the recording companies were able to exert strong influence the market and sell CDs at a high-profit margin. Using their distribution control power, record companies’ negotiated favorable prices for record albums and the industry made great profits. While selling albums was beneficial to the record companies, consumers were at a disadvantage since they were essentially forced to buy songs that they did not want in order to get the songs they wanted.
The success enjoyed by Canadian-based recording companies reduced the pressure on the government. Radio stations and the audiences no longer complained about a shortage of high-quality Canadian recordings as they had in the years before 1970 (Sterling 449). Even so, the government still maintained its support of Canadian Music.
Present Realities of the Industry
The Canadian recording industry has grown into a huge force due to the input of the federal government and the nation has been able to produce many internationally renowned artists. Even so, the industry today faces a number of significant challenges. The last decade has witnessed the Canadian recording industry struggle to stay alive. Sutherland and Will argue that record companies have been unable to make as much money as they did in the 90s due to significant changes in the market (141).
In its early years, the recording industry developed as a means to sell physical products in the form of cassettes, vinyl records, and CDs. Other modes of consumption such as download for cell phones and online music sales are becoming more prominent rendering the original role of the recording industry obsolete. File-sharing technology has characterized the present-day music market. While CD sales experience a steady decline over the last decades, digital records have experienced explosive growth in sales.
The control that recording companies hold on music distribution has been threatened by digital distribution. Goff notes that the dramatically lower manufacturing and distribution costs have meant that independent artists can engage in the distribution process by themselves without having to rely on the expensive advertising and distribution channels offered by prominent record labels (132). Adjustment to digital technologies has therefore been the biggest change that the Canadian music recording industry has had to face. This adjustment has not been easy and the industry is still trying to come up with the best model to exploit this technology.
The recording industry is no longer able to maintain its domination of the distribution network. The industry has been forced to work together with technology companies outside the music industry in order to supply music to consumers. Downloading sites such as PureTracks have been approved by the recording industry and are being used to provide downloading services to consumers. Hull, Geoffrey, and Hutchison reveal that Canadian recording companies have had to relinquish their role as primary distributors of music to companies like Apple, Wal-Mart, and Amazon, which run download sites (151).
The internet has reduced the costs of production, marketing, promotion, and distribution. This has rendered some recording companies irrelevant since creative artists are able to reach and communicate directly with their audiences at a cheap cost. This decentralized system has increased the variety of content that reaches the public with artists being able to earn more selling singles without the help of major recording companies.
The recording industry in Canada has had to implement changes in its business model in order to remain profitable in the current digital age (Armstrong 241). For example, the recording industry was forced to adapt its business model to exploit the peer-to-peer distribution since it could not compete or shut down this technology with litigation.
The recording industry is today faced with the threat of piracy through illegal downloading. Between 1999 and 2007, the Canadian Recording Industry Associated reported that the industry had racked up a loss of $465 million due to illegal downloading of music (Hull, Hutchison and Richard 305). This trend can only be projected to have grown worse as a greater section of the population gain access to the internet and technological advances increase the bandwidth available to the typical user.
The Canadian recording industry has strongly reacted against peer-to-peer communication networks. Trosow states that the industry has lobbied for the amendment of the Copyright Act, 2008 and supported the enactment of technological protection measures (320). Such acts impose more restrictions on copyrighted material, therefore, protecting the interests of the recording industry, which is heavily invested in the works of the artists.
There has been a shift in the cultural policy adopted by the government concerning the recording industry. While these policies were in the past aimed at protecting Canadian culture, they have become increasingly trade-oriented. Recording companies have been given opportunities to take advantage of international trade in cultural product and exploit external markets. This has led to sustained international success by a number of Canadian artists with significant exportation of Canadian music to the international market.
Future Prospects of the Industry
The future prosperity of the recording industry in Canada will depend on the ability of key players in the industry to adjust to the prevailing market forces. The Canadian recording industry needs to adjust its business model in order to remain relevant in the coming years. The current model is characterized by a few dominant recording companies, which are able to control the distribution of content.
This model is not sustainable as the audiences have greater exposure to music (Armstrong 243). The recording industry will have an even harder task trying to control the market in the future since audiences are exposed to a wider variety of music and artists. The traditional tendency of the recording industry to promote a small number of performers who are raised to star level will not be sustainable in the future music industry.
Recording companies will be forced to give more attention to singles produced by artists. Traditionally, the recording industry has favored the production of albums. Artists were encouraged to produce albums that could then be promoted and sold by the recording companies. Singles were all but eliminated since they were not economical (Hull et al. 23). This practice is not sustainable since digital downloading enables consumers to purchase single copies of the music as opposed to being forced to buy an entire album.
The Canadian recording industry is shifting its core functions to include more than just retailing of produced music. The industry can be expected to focus less on the distribution and retail side of musical products as these roles are taken up by other non-music industries. As it is, the recording industry has not been able to make the uploading of music files in Canada illegal (Taras and Maria 231).
Digital downloads will, therefore, become the primary means through which music is dispersed to consumers. The industry has suffered due to its laxity in adopting digitalization. Armstrong warns that this failure to digitize has led to significant losses by the Canadian industry as its counterparts in other countries have engaged in aggressive digitization in order to exploit the internet (231). The industry can be expected to undertake massive digitization efforts with old records being converted into digital form. This will ensure that the industry profits from internet technology.
Major recording labels in Canada have recently acquired a trend of signing on fewer Canadian artists out of monetary considerations. These major labels have instead focused on aggressively marketing their international repertoire, which consists of artists who have sufficient international success (Hull, Hutchison and Richard 305). Sutherland and Will observe that while this has hurt the chances of Canadian artists who wish to sign with major companies, it has created an opportunity for Canadian-owned independent recording companies which have engaged in intense artist development activity (146).
Independent recording companies have therefore played an even greater role in Canada’s music industry in recent years. The future promises to see most of the current key players in the industry move out and their place was taken by other companies. New independent recording companies that effectively utilize new technology are expected to become prevalent in the field. This is consistent with the history of the Canadian recording industry, which has been dominated for most of its history by small, short-lived companies or by the branch plants of companies based elsewhere (Bennett and Simon 56).
Conclusion
This paper set out to provide a detailed discussion of Canada’s music recording industry. The paper has traced how the recording industry has grown from being an obscure entity largely overlooked by the government to be a significant cultural component enjoying government support. The year 1970 has been highlighted as a major turning point in the development of the recording industry in Canada. This is the year when the government introduced protectionist measures that promoted Canadian material and regulated the market in favor of Canadian artists.
This federal action is largely credited with the success of the recording industry in Canada for the past 4 decades. The paper has highlighted that current technological changes are threatening the prosperity of the industry. The future of Canada’s recording industry, therefore, remains uncertain. The environment within which the recording industry has typically grown has changed significantly over time and it can be expected to change even more in the future. It is therefore up to the recording industry to transform itself in order to remain a useful tool for developing and sustaining musical creative activity in Canada.
Works Cited
Armstrong, Robert. Broadcasting Policy in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010. Print.
Bennett, Tony and Simon Frith. Rock and Popular Music: Politics, Policies, Institutions. Ottawa: Routledge, 1993. Print.
Goff, Patricia. Limits to Liberalization: Local Culture in a Global Marketplace. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007. Print.
Hull, Geoffrey, Hutchison Thomas and Richard Strasser. The Music Business and Recording Industry: Delivering Music in the 21st Century. Quebec: Taylor & Francis, 2010. Print.
Sterling, Charles. Encyclopedia of Radio. Montreal: Taylor & Francis, 2003. Print.
Sutherland, Richard and Will Straw. The Canadian Music Industry at a Crossroads. 2007.
Taras, David and Maria Bakardjieva. Alberta: University of Calgary Press, 2007. Print.
Trosow, Samuel. “The copyright policy paradox: Overcoming competing agendas in the digital labour movement.” Ephemera 10.3 (2010): 319-336. Print.