Two big CHANGES AT FACTOR

by Tim Brady

Change #1

Three years ago, Cana­di­an Her­itage ter­mi­nat­ed the “Spe­cial­ized Sound Record­ing” grants pro­gram. At the time, Cana­di­an Her­itage min­is­ter James Moore said: “We already have pro­grams in place – turn to FACTOR and Musi­cac­tion” – just don’t ask the Cana­da Coun­cil for the Arts anymore.

Musi­cac­tion is FACTOR’s fran­coph­o­ne coun­ter­part. They already had some ini­tia­tives to help record new music, but FACTOR had almost nothing.

So we start­ed meet­ing with FACTOR’s pres­i­dent and staff in Toron­to and Mon­tre­al; we invit­ed their vice-pres­i­dent to our FORUM 2012; we met with MPs and the senior man­age­ment at Cana­di­an Her­itage; we orga­nized con­fer­ence calls, and so on.

Now, three years lat­er, FACTOR has added a “Specialized/Experimental” cat­e­go­ry to its struc­ture, and they will cre­ate a jury specif­i­cal­ly for this music. There isn’t more mon­ey for the records though, but at least the appli­ca­tion review process has been improved. Futher­more, FACTOR is inter­est­ed in spon­sor­ing the CNMN’s next edi­tion of FORUM, Cal­gary 2014. Rela­tions between our com­mu­ni­ty and FACTOR – a major grantor – have sig­nif­i­cant­ly improved.

They saw us as a seri­ous inter­locu­tor because we rep­re­sent THE WHOLE com­mu­ni­ty. I esti­mate the cost of adding 2 (cru­cial!) words on a form at 100 hours of work and $1,000 in trav­el expens­es. I see it as a vic­to­ry – a small one, but a vic­to­ry nonethe­less. So, it seems that the CNMN’s mis­sion – to make changes for the new music com­mu­ni­ty – is work­ing out on a con­crete level.

Change #2

FACTOR is chang­ing how it funds record­ings, and how sub­mis­sions are evaluated.

This is an even big­ger change.  These changes are pri­mar­i­ly in response to the very rapid death of the com­mer­cial music indus­try thanks to MP3s/iTunes/YOUTUBE (though our voic­es have had their effect on these issues as well).  It seems that all but the biggest acts (Justin Beiber and com­pa­ny) are los­ing mon­ey — even mid-sized rock and indie bands can’t sell records or make mon­ey the­ses days.  But this change will affect us, and pos­si­bly for the better.

- The appli­ca­tion process is being made all paper­less, much more user-friend­ly (mul­ti­ple users), and updateable.
— Unit Sales will no longer be the only way to get mon­ey for Tour­ing, Video and oth­er programs
— Mov­ing to an Artist Rat­ing, peer-assess­ment system
— Fund­ing will now be a sub­sidy (grant) – NOT a loan

Con­tact FACTOR for more infor­ma­tion. We strong­ly sug­gest that you also con­tact FACTOR to ask to be put on the “Specialized/Experimental” music jury list – vis­it this page for more information.

Direct arti­cle link: Two big CHANGES AT FACTOR
15th edi­tion CNMN Bul­letin — Win­ter 2013