Q’s With Neill Dixon, President Of Canadian Music Week

– Neill Dixon

As Canadian Music Week prepares to stage for the 37th time, music industry professionals are gearing up for a week of seminars and speakers, networking, an awards ceremony and, most importantly, music.

CMW takes over the city of Toronto May 6-12 with its music festival performances from 600 artists in some 40 venues. A summit featuring programming and networking for industry professionals and creatives will be held May 9-11 at the Sheraton Center Toronto Hotel.

Notable participants for this year’s edition include songwriters and producers Bryan Michael Cox and Al “Butter” Mclean; Dave Grohl and his mother Virginia Hanlon Grohl; Jermaine Dupri; songwriter Linda Perry; Nile Rodgers; songwriter and producer Poo Bear; and Oak View Group (Pollstar’s parent company) CEO Tim Leiweke.

CMW President Neill Dixon spoke with Pollstar about the forthcoming shindig.

Pollstar: So all the festival performances are ticketed except one, correct?

Neill Dixon: Right. There’s one free show, it’s at Yonge-Dundas Square on Saturday, May 11. Yonge-Dundas Square is sort of like Times Square in New York, that’s the only way I can describe it. Yonge and Dundas are both major streets and it’s where they intersect, and the area is all built up, there’s a million LED billboards everywhere.

So that show starts at noon and we are showcasing all these new bands from South Africa.

Every year we do a feature country, we do an in-depth report on them and bring over a number of their major professionals, key companies, we usually work with their government to help finance some of this stuff. It’s really a business-to-business builder for reciprocal business between South Africa and Canada, but also South Africa and about 30 other countries, because that’s how many attend this conference. It’s quite international now.

That’s where these festival plays dovetail with the conference. At the conference, the spotlight is on South Africa, there’s panels, workshops, one on one meetings. A lot of South African speakers are peppered throughout the three days on various panels where they have expertise. We try to make it very inclusive for the guests so they’re not just talking about their own market but they are assimilated in what’s going on here and internationally.

It seems like the event is called Canadian Music Week, but it’s really an internationally oriented thing now.

It started out very local and very focused but over time [that’s been the case], particularly nowadays when there is such a large independent sector. The multinationals dominated the landscape like dinosaurs. You didn’t have to worry about breaking new markets and taking care of business yourself because they had an office somewhere in all these countries. Managers’ whole motivation was “get the record deal.” Now, these managers, these labels pretty much have to do everything themselves. Because the internet and streaming has opened up the world, it’s possible to do it.

So a lot of these acts now need to get outside of their own market because they can’t overplay it. They don’t have income from their record royalties so they need to tour, and the world is their oyster.

That’s why this has become such an international business, because people are forced to do business beyond their own territories. Sometimes they are forced economically because there’s not enough money or because there is a huge reward in touring if you are successful and capitalize on the global market. Any way you look at it, it’s a global business.

What are the attendance numbers like this year?

They’re looking pretty good. It’s hard to say, the conference is always consistent, there’s anywhere from 2,500 to 3,000 people there but the festival attendance varies a lot based on the number of headliners we have. Every odd year we might have a stadium or arena show, so the numbers get inflated. There’s usually 100,000 people attending the festival, some years it jumps to 200,000. Based on sales right now, it’s more in the 100,000 range.

But the point isn’t for the festival to get maximum ticket sales each year, it’s more about giving a platform to rising artists, right?

Correct, we’re not trying to compete with anyone. There’s a lot of festivals out there, as you know, and a lot of festivals attend this event to discover new talent, to network, not unlike Pollstar Live! In some cases they haven’t seen each other for years, a lot of these people grew up at this event because it’s been going for 37 years. Some people started when they were students and they’re now running companies. It’s multi-generational now.

You recently spoke at the O’Cannabiz conference and expo. Will any of the conversation about cannabis carry over into CMW?

It does a bit, but the problem with the laws in Canada, is it might be legal here, but they’ve got very strict laws about advertising, sponsorship, marketing, that sort of thing.

So the cannabis industry can’t [collaborate] with the music industry. Our audience would be their perfect audience, but by law they’re not allowed to reach out.

That might change. In the States it’s a lot different than it is here. It is legal nationally [in Canada], these companies can do certain things, but they can’t be overt, and they certainly can’t appeal to young people.

I think the government erred on the side of caution, because you know Canada was one of the first countries in the Western world to legalize and they didn’t want any problems, so they made it very strict.

There will probably be some discussions at this conference about workarounds, what you can do, as far as influencers. [Companies] are not even allowed to have endorsements from celebrities for their products.