Photo courtesy of Van Felt

February 11th, 2010 – So as many of you know, I live in Vancouver and tomorrow marks the beginning of the 2010 Olympic Winter Games. While I think it’s cool that people from all over the world are here (though mostly the super wealthy), I’m not a huge sports fanatic. I like playing sports, but I’m not really a fan of watching other people play them. That being said, I will still be proud of the Canadians that are participating…Go Canada!

One interesting side effect of having the Olympics here, is that there is free live music playing every day in venues in and around Vancouver for the duration of the games. For those of you who are wondering why that’s such a big deal, count yourselves lucky that you live in awesome cities. Vancouver has very few venues for live music due to strict zoning laws, and as such, there isn’t a whole lot of support for performances that aren’t huge International artists.

Not all of Canada is like this; when I lived in Toronto I was able to go to Queen Street any night of the week and see bands at a dozen filled venues. Coming back to Vancouver after that was pretty harsh. I hope that these concerts peak interest for seeing live music here and the support for it grows. There are a lot of great artists here, but no support for them.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 11th, 2010 at 5:36 pm.
Categories: Music Business and Law.

One Comment, Comment or Ping

  1. mrG

    that music is hardly free, in fact SOCAN stepped in quickly to ensure they get a very nice fat piece of the pie:

    From The Vancouver Sun:
    “Musicians and singers who are approved to perform inside the region’s SkyTrain stations were sent a letter in October from the region’s transit authority, informing them they could soon be asked to pay as much as $1,500 annually for a performance licence.

    The letter states that Socan — the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada — is demanding royalties for songs being performed in stations.

    According to TransLink, those costs could add up to $40,000 a year and will be passed on to the artists.

    TransLink charges musicians $75 a year — a fee that doesn’t cover the program’s administration costs, said TransLink spokesman Ken Hardie. With the additional pressure, “we’re probably faced with possibly having to cancel the program,” he said

    http://thefmhole.blogspot.com/2009/12/buskers-face-billing-by-socan-for-song.html

    Feb 13th, 2010

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