Digital Content Initiative (DCI) Report – Dec 2014

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CNMN began work­ing on the Dig­i­tal Con­tent Ini­tia­tive (DCI) rough­ly two years ago. Put sim­ply, con­cert music (art music, or what­ev­er def­i­n­i­tion you pre­fer) needs some­thing to fill the huge gap left in our com­mu­ni­ty by the dis­en­gage­ment of CBC and Radio-Canada.

The idea is to cre­ate a new fund, with a mix­ture of pub­lic and pri­vate fund­ing, that will give artists and artis­tic com­pa­nies the funds nec­es­sary to cre­ate very high-qual­i­ty audio and video dig­i­tal con­tent, and to cre­ate and pro­mote a pro­fes­sion­al dig­i­tal hub for dis­tri­b­u­tion (this could be CDs, DVDs, live stream­ing, video for YouTube, Inter­net art, etc.).

The fol­low­ing work was car­ried out in the 2013–14 season:

  • Octo­ber 2013: We met with Sophie Cou­ture, Head of Music Pol­i­cy at Her­itage Cana­da. In April 2015, the $25 mil­lion Cana­da Music Fund will be renewed by Cana­di­an Her­itage. Dis­cus­sions are already under­way as to how this mon­ey will be allo­cat­ed – what are the pri­or­i­ties, what will be the new pro­grammes. Cana­di­an Her­itage has told us that almost all the real deci­sions will be made by Novem­ber 2014, in order to be ready for the April 2015 roll­out. So we need to make a very strong pro­pos­al to Cana­di­an Her­itage before Novem­ber 2014.
  • Decem­ber 2013: Applied for Lead­er­ship through Change fund­ing through Cana­da Coun­cil. Received $20,000.
  • Decem­ber 2013: DCI nation­al meet­ing in Toron­to – work­ing group with CMC, empreintes DIG­I­TALes, Le Vivi­er, Action Jazz Cana­da, and con­sul­ta­tions with Sound­streams and Tafelmusik.
  • Slight name change: The Dig­i­tal Con­tent Ini­tia­tive was for­mer­ly called the Cana­di­an Spe­cialised Music Dis­sem­i­na­tion and Dig­i­tal Con­tent Ini­tia­tive (CSMDDCI) but we thought it best to sim­pli­fy the name.
  • June 2014: We hired con­sul­tant Pierre Lalonde. This is a big, com­plex, very polit­i­cal process and M. Lalonde for­mer­ly worked at Her­itage Cana­da, run­ning the music pol­i­cy divi­sion – so he knows how things work.
  • June 2014: Fur­ther DCI meet­ings in Toron­to with con­sul­tant Pierre Lalonde.
  • Work­ing on final­iz­ing a strong pro­pos­al for fall 2014. We will ask for a scal­able bud­get start­ing at $2.5 mil­lion and pro­gress­ing to $7.5 mil­lion in 4 years.
  • Work­ing with Michel Dusches­neau, head of OICRM, to cre­ate a com­pre­hen­sive doc­u­ment show­ing the over­whelm­ing evi­dence that sup­ports the need for a true musi­cal diver­si­ty in the Cana­di­an music indus­try and in our edu­ca­tion system.

This project is very ambi­tious, but the bud­get shows we take the project seri­ous­ly, that the loss of the CBC/SRC is hav­ing a huge­ly neg­a­tive impact on music in Canada.

Please con­tact Tim Brady for more information:
tim@timbrady.ca

 

Direct link: Dig­i­tal Con­tent Ini­tia­tive (DCI) Report – Dec 2014
Return to full Bul­letin — Decem­ber 2014