Guest Blog – Canadian Music Week-where Music comes last

This is an interesting take on Canadian Music Week, written by ‘Honest Reviews: Death to the Canadian Music Industry blog.. we’ll let you form your own opinion on this topic.

We made an honest attempt to evaluate every single artist on the CMW lineup this year,  many hours listening to the bands “selected” for participation at Canadian music week, and even skipping some bands and genres completely, we are still stuck in the Ds with no end in sight.

Some trends so far:

1) There is just no way that Canadian Music Week sat and listened honestly to all of these bands. Too much evidence of some bands who are terrible by a UNIVERSAL STANDARD.  Have you ever heard a band who applied to CMW that was NOT accepted to CMW? Give me one example and I’ll shut up about this.

Here is an example:

Met a young man from Calgary, who is in Toronto for CMW to play his “first concert.” He was really enthusiastic about his showcase at 1am at a small cafe, and provided some insight:

• He applied to a bunch of festivals, CMW was the only one he was accepted to, and was surprised to get accepted. He took that acceptance as a sign that he was  “heading in the right direction.”

• He spent $800 to fly here, $600 for a week of hotel, and paid to attend all the industry panels (etc) at CMW which costs $600. Feeding himself, renting a car, this kid easily spent $3000. For someone who has never played a show before, I’m sure all of this seemed absolutely worth it for the “huge opportunity” of playing at CMW (his words).

• He was sad because he has three hours of material and CMW was only giving him 40 minutes. His music is country acoustic with rapping verses.

• I listened to his CMW page when I got home. Guess what I would have said about him? Yeah… not good. Kid was real nice, but he is not at a place where he should be flying across country.