Canadian Musician November / December 2019 | Page 18

AS HEARD ON THE...
DAVE COOL
Dir. of Artist &
Industry Outreach,
Bandzoogle
For the full interview, listen to
the Oct. 9, 2019 episode
Adam Gontier of
SAINT ASONIA
For the full interview, listen to the Oct. 23, 2019 episode
CM: Recently in the magazine, we discussed the mental
health crisis among professional musicians, and a common
theme in those conversation was a need for the industry
– labels, publishers, agents, etc. – to do more to help the
musicians they earn money off of. I’m wondering where your
thoughts are on that, given that you’ve been open about
your own experiences battling addiction and receiving
treatment?
Adam Gontier: It’s a tough one because if there’s anything I’ve
learned about addiction from my own experiences, it’s that if I don’t
want to change, if deep down I really don’t want to be a different
person, I won’t become a different person. I will stay on the same
path and continue the same behaviors. I know there are a lot of
organizations in the music industry who help, particularly touring
musicians, get into the proper treatment.
On the business side of it, I understand that it feels like labels
and people who are making money off of musicians, in a way,
should be helping with that sort of thing, but I am not sure what
could be done, to tell you the truth. Each individual needs to hit
whatever their bottom is. I guess having the resources there [at that
point] is very important.
CM: As Bandzoogle adds a
crowdfunding option to its
suite of services, are you
seeing much hesitancy or
mistrust from artists about
crowdfunding itself follow-
ing the controversial bank-
ruptcy of PledgeMusic?
Dave Cool: There’s definitely a conversation happening right now
about whether crowdfunding is still relevant. It’s up to the individ-
ual artists, I would say, but there’s definitely artists out there who
believe that method of raising money is over now. I can understand
that, and especially on Twitter, we’ve been tagged in conversations
about PledgeMusic and crowdfund and we chime in.
Look, whatever a musician believes is best for their career, if
they do want to crowdfund, then we just want to let them know
that they’re able to do that through our platform. If they don’t be-
lieve it’s a viable solution anymore to go the crowdfunding route,
then that is obviously their call. I would disagree with it; I think it
can still be a really fun and exciting way to engage your fanbase
and also raise money at the same time for a project, but I do un-
derstand that there may now be a mistrust between musicians and
tech… It is a great question and I think the viability of crowdfund-
ing as a form of raising money for a career has definitely been put
into question because of how toxic the whole PledgeMusic thing
ended up being.
DANYA DIXON
CEO of Canadian Music Week
For the full interview, listen to the Sept. 25,
2019 episode
CM: Looking at CMW’s conference pro-
gramming in 2020 and beyond, what
are some of the important topics that
you think need to be addressed?
Danya Dixon: With the Unison Benevo-
lent Fund, we started a couple streams on
mental illness. Obviously in the last couple
years we’ve lost some really great people
in the music community and we want to
bring awareness to that, whether it is talking
about balancing your career and money,
how to get ahead, prevention and what
to do with mental illness… The Canadian
Live Music Association, too, has been very
helpful in that.
Obviously, there is also technological
advancement, like AR/VR and blockchain
technology. Really important, too, is just
knowing your rights as an artist – you know,
how to get discovered, played, and paid,
and just having those entrepreneurial skills
that you need now. You need to know what
an agent does, a manager does, what the
labels do, your publishing rights, licensing,
and all that kind of thing so you don’t get
screwed over and you know what to do
with yourself. I think that is a little bit differ-
ent than what artists had in previous years.
Now you have to be privy to a whole bunch
of different things, so just being smart as a
singer-songwriter and knowing the music
business is pretty important.
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18 CANADIAN MUSICIAN