Steve Jones: Rethinking Cancon

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  0:02  
The sound off podcast. The show about podcast and broadcast starts now.

Matt Cundill  0:13  
This week, Steve Jones, who is the president of Stingray radio, joins me to talk about the regulatory landscape in Canada. He's been posting on LinkedIn all about the small things about Canadian radio regulations that seem quirky Canadian and cute, things like Tate McCray winning Canadian Single of the Year with the song x's, but according to the CRTC rules that govern Canadian radio, the song isn't Canadian at all because it was co written with two Americans. That's not all that cute when you're in the radio business. Also, what do all the following songs have in common? Pat Benatar, hit me with your best shot. Lenny Kravitz, American woman heart. What about love? Rod Stewart, rhythm of my heart. Deuces are wild. From Aerosmith and my way from Frank Sinatra, they're all considered Canadian songs, even though none of those artists are from Canada. Meanwhile, various songs from Justin Bieber, Tate McCray, Celine Dion, Bryan Adams, Michael Buble, Shawn Mendes and others are not designated as Canadian because those artists collaborated with some of the best songwriters in the world who didn't happen to be from Canada. Overall, Canada is still using the same methods to do can con accounting that they did back in the early 1970s these regulations are a lot like 24 Sussex drive in Ottawa, home to the Canadian Prime Minister. You see no one did any updating to it since Pierre Trudeau was in office and the last person to live there was Stephen Harper 10 years ago. It has now become uninhabitable for radio listeners and radio operators. It kind of feels the same way when it comes to radio regulations. The conversation you're about to hear is not about how bad Canadian content is. Quite the opposite. In 2015 Canadian artists made up seven of the top 10 most popular artists on the Billboard charts for that year. However, not all those artists had songs that were considered Canadian. This is about updating the regulations to account for the realities of 2025 we need to ask questions like, what's best for Canadian artists? What's best for Indigenous artists? What is best for the radio business, who now share a little more listening time with other platforms, things like Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, your portable music collection, podcasts, social media, the internet, home computers. Yes, home computers. The basis for counting Canadian content is older than home computers. Finally, I think we need to ask what's best for radio listeners, because without them, there is no radio. Let me just pose the question to everyone. Now, if we had to start this all over again, how could we do it? Steve Jones has worked in the Cayman Islands and in Boston for intercom, and in places like Edmonton, Halifax and Toronto, I always have the best conversations with Steve, and this is very hard for me to say. I think he loves radio and music just a little more than I do. Steve Jones joins me from Toronto. Your job. You are president of Stingray radio? Yeah,

Steve Jones  3:22  
I became president of Stingray radio 13 months ago, and when, when I got this job, I realized I'm in a position where I have a voice. I come from the product side, so I have an understanding of this issue, and I just decided I only have maybe a decade or so left in this industry, and I want to use that voice. And you know, if we don't succeed in making change, I just intend to go down swinging.

Matt Cundill  3:46  
I'm really thankful that you're mentioning all this stuff, because this is a very difficult thing to explain to people who don't work inside radio, and even if you're close to radio, maybe you work in podcast, or maybe you work in streaming, or maybe you work on the ad buying side. A lot of people don't know all the things that go into creating the radio product and why it sounds the way it sounds. So I really thank you for doing these LinkedIn posts that really sort of explain some of the nuances and intricacies of the final product that we listen to on the radio every day.

Steve Jones  4:19  
Thank you. I yeah, I agree with you. There's a lot of misinformation and disinformation and misunderstanding, even between the music creators and the music distributors, which radio would be one of them, and I think that that miscommunication and the misunderstanding results in a lot of a lot of things get said on both sides about whether radio is good to music, and whether music is good to radio, and how we interact, and the regulatory framework we work in, and the needs of the musicians and music creators and the needs of radio and we don't often share those. I've heard from so many people on on musicians, songwriters and. Publishers, labels, in the artists and in the Acts who have expressed an appreciation they don't always agree with what I'm saying, but their level of understanding about why radio feels the way it does goes up. And similarly, when I hear from those music creators and those invested in the music side of it, my understanding of why can con is important to them, and why they want to preserve elements of what we have that's important too. So it's healthy. It's good dialog.

Matt Cundill  5:31  
Can we first acknowledge that can con is a tariff? Yes,

Steve Jones  5:34  
we can definitely acknowledge that. And you pay that tariff every time you turn on a radio station in Canada, and here 250% more Canadian content than you would normally consume in your daily life. And that's just data backed up by years of analysis of in the old days of music sales and now in terms of streams, Canadian consumers consume somewhere between 10 and 15% usually closer to 10, of Canadian content. So if you're making a playlist on Apple Music and you want to make a playlist of great 80s rock, there's a good chance if you're a Canadian person doing that 10% of your playlist is glass, tiger, Bryan Adams, the spoons, whatever else from the 80s. If you turn on a Canadian radio station centered in the 80s, you're going to hear 35% minimum Canadian content, significantly more than you would otherwise choose. And one of the primary complaints we get by classic hits and classic rock radio is you play the same Canadian songs over and over again. Well, yes, because nobody's making new 80s music from April one, and nobody's making new 80s music from Brian Adams. Brian Adams is making new music, but you just can't go back and rewrite history. So there's a limited well upon which to draw, and we do our best. But there is a tipping point when consumers express a desire for 10% of something and you're forced to give them 35% of something. There is no way to give them 35% of something they only want 10% of and give them something they like all the time. You end up digging deeper into a well of music that is either lesser known or lesser loved, and you compromise your product and in the old days of a walled garden of media, when Canadians couldn't access music from out of the country on a streaming platform or on a on an app that gives you radio stations from everywhere in the world. In those days, it didn't matter as much, because there was no competitive disadvantage for us. Every radio station in Canada was bound by the same rules, and pretty much every listener in Canada, saved for the ones in Niagara Falls, Windsor and a few other markets, couldn't really listen to anything but Canadian radio that has completely shifted and changed, and now consumers can listen to whatever they want, wherever they want, and yet Canadian radio is still treated like it exists in this walled garden of exclusivity, and these regulations, as they currently stand, are taking a significant toll. I'm not suggesting for a moment, they're the only reason that radio has the challenges it has. There's a multitude of reasons, but the regulatory framework is one of them, and what's frustrating is it's probably the one that can be most immediately and easily addressed.

Matt Cundill  8:26  
So I love that. Especially love this one where polls will come out and I'll these are informal polls, where I'll talk to people and say, Hey, do you support can con? And they'll say yes, and you get it's always in the majority. We love can con serve the business really well. I've got some of my favorite artists. Well, let me play you some songs. Well, I don't want to listen to that, and I don't want to listen to that, and I don't want to listen to that, and now you don't love can con nearly as much when you actually sort of show and present it to them.

Steve Jones  8:54  
Yeah. I mean, we do a significant amount of music research in markets all across Canada, in every radio format and in every research study. What you just said plays out in the top testing songs, the songs that listeners say we like the most. We want to hear the most, in the top 100 songs. In any music test, we will see five to 10% Canadian content in the bottom 100 songs will generally see 50% plus of Canadian content. That's not saying, Can con is bad. I posted on LinkedIn a few weeks ago a post that used actual data from a 1200 song music test. That's a robust study 1200 songs, of the top 600 songs 14% can cut. That is actually four points greater than what consumers consume on their own in the 10% range. The problem is the bottom 600 is predominantly can con and when we have to reach 35% you're drawing from that pool. Of you know, lesser familiar, lesser desirable music. I'm not saying it's bad, and that's one of the things that I come up against a lot in this discussion is, well, you just haven't yet played my favorite band, my indie artist, the artist I like the most, this obscure artist from the 80s, whatever you haven't played that there's a reason why we haven't played that we've researched this music to death for years, and found the same things emerge time and time again, and some of my favorite artists in Canada are not played at Radio. I love Donovan woods, incredible singer songwriter. We can't get Donovan Woods' music to test in a music test with mainstream listeners, that's okay. He finds a home at CBC Radio. He finds a home at Americana stations. He doesn't seem to fit into the mainstream. There's a million artists like that. So there's two things. These things can exist at the same time. There can be a huge well of great music that we don't play at radio because it's not commercially viable. Doesn't fit in with formats and mainstream audiences, it can still be very good. The problem is it just doesn't work at radio. So we have a relatively limited pool of highly desirable can con to choose from in any format. And like I said, you have this small pool, but you have a large quota, and therefore you end up burning through and fatiguing listeners on these same songs. And it's it's frustrating for audiences, it's frustrating for radio. And when those same audiences leave radio to go hear what they want to hear, they choose 10% can con.

Matt Cundill  11:37  
So you're kind of the perfect person to address this other sort of byproduct of can con that I've noticed, and I've got, I've got a lot of little things I've noticed, because I worked predominantly in the 90s, but you worked in Boston, and couple of my favorite radio stations came out of Boston. I don't think they were the ones that were necessarily in your building. Actually, I'm going to correct that. I think one of them was so W, A, A, F, nice, hard, rocking God smack station. And, you know, WB OS is another one. And you know, these are two radio formats that just are shut out of Canada. We don't have triple A, we don't have a harder, active rock scene. They never could exist because I feel can con kept them out. You couldn't really populate Canadian artists in either of those formats,

Steve Jones  12:23  
I think you're right. And just back to the point about working in Boston, I'm glad you raised that, because in picking up this torch, I have been accused of being anti can con, and that kind of hurts, because I've worked in three countries. I worked in Canada, I worked in Boston, I worked in the Caribbean. I came back to Canada with a much greater sense of Canadian pride than I ever had when I was younger, before I left, and that pride extends to music. I'm really proud of the music this country creates, and I'm really proud of the role radio has played in creating it. So again, back to two things that can be contradictory yet true at the same time, I think Canadian content regulations are detrimental to the music industry and to the radio industry, but I think they need to be there, and we need to grow Canadian music. The formats you speak of, you're right. There are multiple ones, hard Rock's a good one. Triple A is a great example. There's a ton of great Canadian triple A music. It finds a home at American radio, because there's really not 35% of it, and our population base is such that it's harder to find an audience for a niche format like that, or, as they'd say in the US, a niche format like that. But there are other formats that we've explored doing that we can't do because of Canadian content regulations. One of them would be smooth R and B or like a, like a retro R and B format. I could see in a market like Toronto or Vancouver, I could see that being a really viable option, but I can't find you 35% Canadian content for a station based in 70s and 80s, soft soul music. There's no exceptions made for that. You either play 35% or you don't do it. And there are, you know, Christian contemporaries, another one where it's really hard to find that music in Vancouver, praise, 1065, out of Bellingham, Washington, does quite well, and they don't have to play 35% Canadian content. They can be a Christian contemporary radio station. You can't really do that in the rest of Canada.

Matt Cundill  14:20  
Yeah. Also point out that 99 nine, the buzz out of Burlington Vermont, has managed to carry the alternative torch quite well right into Montreal, and I've sort of kept showing on its toes for a number of years. But you know, people would see that other formats would exist and cross the border quite nicely.

Steve Jones  14:37  
There are great formats for Cancun. I mean, we have a solid mine of great classic rock, great classic hits, even great 90s and 2000s alternative. There's current Canadian content on the CHR, hot AC and country formats. Is is solid, but in no case is it 35% solid. It just never is. And I know. That this is a frustrating thing for music creators and labels to hear. I looked at a country music test yesterday, current country music test. There are two or three can con songs that test right up there with the biggest in country music, and then at the bottom, there's a whole bunch of stuff that just doesn't and I know it's frustrating, because I think every music creator believes that their music is as good as blank, but not every listener feels that way. And one of the other problems

Matt Cundill  15:27  
you pointed out correctly is how we define can con. First of all, it has not changed in, I don't know, since 1997 maybe.

Steve Jones  15:36  
Yeah, there have been a couple of minor tweaks, but really, you could say that the essence of can con hasn't changed since 1971 when it was created the maple system that was launched in the early 70s, M, A, P, L, songs need to achieve two out of four points on the maple scale. M is music written primarily by a Canadian. A is artist is Canadian. P is the weird 1p. Is performed in a Canadian Studio or live in Canada, which, of course, made sense in 1971 when every song was either recorded live or recorded in a studio. Now, songs are recorded in tour busses and hotel rooms. It's a harder one to define. And then the L is for lyrics. So music, artist performance and lyrics, songs have to achieve two out of four to be qualified as Canadian like this is the interesting thing to look at, is the unintended consequences of well intended regulation. With the maple system the way it is. Let's say a Canadian artist, born and raised in Canada grew up on Canadian culture, Canadian politics, Canadian identity. They're discovered in America, and they go to the US, and they work with the best writers and the best producers, and they release music that is shared around the world that reflects their unique Canadian identity in their name and in their sound. And it's not can con because it doesn't meet the four criteria, even though that artist's passport says they're Canadian and they may live in Canada, their music isn't Canadian. And so that artist you know could be Justin Bieber, could be Shawn Mendes, could be Michael Buble, could be Celine Dion. Those are legitimate artists who the bulk of their catalogs are not Canadian content, because even though Shawn Mendes still has a condo at Bathurst in front in Toronto, you know, he records his music in the US. He co writes with Americans, and he co writes with Brits and Aussies and others from around the world. It's almost like we punish our best when they collaborate with the world's best. To me, the equivalency would be saying to Sidney Crosby, you can't put on the team Canada Jersey because you play in Pittsburgh and you collaborate with Russians and Americans and Swedes. We don't want that. We only want to acknowledge Canadians who stay at home and only collaborate with Canadians. It's well, it made sense in 1971 when you couldn't easily collaborate across borders. It's so much easier now to get on a zoom call or a teams call and CO write a song with somebody who's in Hong Kong or somebody who's in Perth, Australia or London, England or Nashville. The world has changed. The regulations haven't, and now we're left playing catch up.

Matt Cundill  18:24  
So maple, M, A, P, L, and well, if we can only get an E in there, oh, how about emerging?

Steve Jones  18:33  
Yeah, what an interesting spot, because the CRTC has welcomed us to give them feedback on the evolution of can con, and they're having hearings in September. I hope to be there, because I'm obviously passionate about the topic. There have been overtures made to the radio industry, to the music industry that the CRTC is looking at mandating emerging artists at Radio. Up until now, there's been an expectation that radio will support emerging artists at a level of 5% there's a discussion about mandating that. There's also a discussion about doing the same thing for indigenous music on commercial radio. And for me, and I think for a lot of us in the radio side, that feels like an incredibly slippery slope. First of all, when you look at contemporary music formats in Canada, country, hot AC, alternative, top 40 AC, almost every one of those formats already supports emerging artists at more than 5% of their playlist. Because it's the course of business. You don't have to legislate things that are already happening, where emerging artists aren't played classic rock, 70s and 80s classic hits. Of course, they're not played there. There are no more emerging artists from that era. So for the CRTC to mandate that classic hit stations stop playing classic hits every 15th song and play a brand new artist and then go back to playing their format is kind of ludicrous. You think about it. So that's a frustrating one. And then the indigenous music topic is one that we all, I think, feel a sense of discomfort talking about, because it's hard to not acknowledge the need for reparations for how indigenous people have been treated in the colonial era of North America. I don't think there's a ton of people out there who disagree with the need to make amends for what has happened over hundreds of years, but mandating the AirPlay of indigenous music on commercial radio is a very difficult and dicey thing to start doing. First of all, there isn't a well of commercially acceptable, available music to play. Sure, there are teal woods and Crystal Shawanda and Susan igloo Clark who come along and have commercial hits, but there's not a wealth of, you know, well produced mass appeal, commercial music being made by indigenous artists, and I think that's where the focus should be. Focusing on AirPlay for it is bypassing the true gap, which is the financial support for the creation of it. The better path, in my mind, would be to make sure that organizations like factor and others that the radio industry supports with millions and millions of dollars every year in contributions, those organizations should be mandated to earmark a specific portion of their funding for Indigenous artists in Canada, because the commercial radio industry is commercial. It is by nature designed to reach big audiences. I've been programming radio stations for 40 years almost, and at no point have I ever looked at a great song that I knew would be a great song on our radio station and thought, well, you know, that's an indigenous artist, so we're not going to play it like that's crazy. We want to play great music that listeners want to hear if artists create great music and they're indigenous, it'll be on the radio in no time at all. The problem is the lack of a solid well of reliable music to choose from. That's problem number one. And if we focus on that problem, I think everything else ultimately solves itself. I think, you know, you get some of these creators of music in indigenous communities who are given access to the resources of great studios, great musicians, great mentorship, and then the labels will naturally want those artists on their label, and radio will naturally play them. It is. It's almost a guarantee. The other challenge I feel with the mandating of indigenous music on the radio is that, once again, as has been the case for the entirety of this discussion since the maple system came into being in the 70s, the onus is put back on the broadcaster. So if you submit a song to a radio station, we're now going to ask you if you self identify as indigenous, and I'm not comfortable asking that question to everyone who submits this on for airplay on the radio, you're asking us to now, not only are you going to disclose your personal information to us, but now we are in possession of that, and that's sensitive information about you that I as a radio operator. I'm not sure it's my place to be in possession of that information. For example, inside our own company, I'm president of a radio company that employs, you know, hundreds of people. I don't know who identifies as what. I know the number. I know the number of people who self identify. I know the number of people who identify as having disabilities. I know those numbers, but I don't know who those people are, because that is personal information. So that, to me, feels like a weird one. And to complicate that another layer, if we have to report that back to the CRPC, we're now saying, Okay, you as an artist have self identified with us, whether you like it or not, and now we're going to take that information and we're going to share it with another party altogether. So that we can back up a mandate that the government has given us. It just It all feels like it could be a very slippery slope. And then, if I just want to throw a third curve ball into that one, this is where I feel the whole thing sort of devolves into virtue signaling. We're trying to make good on mistreatment of indigenous people for hundreds of years, and I get that, and that's a very good and noble exercise that we should take part in, but we're going to do it in the framework of the colonialism that's been established. In other words, the Iroquois people of Southern Ontario were not part of Southern Ontario. That nation extended down into Ohio and upstate New York. So why would an artist who self identifies as a member of that Iroquois nation, who lives, let's say, in Barrie, Ontario, be treated any differently than a member of that same indigenous nation who lives in upstate New York or the Sioux and Blackfoot? Tribes of the prairies, those nations did not recognize the 49th parallel as their border colonialism put it there. So now we're going to go back and try like acknowledge that the Blackfoot people who live in southern Saskatchewan get preferential treatment at Canadian radio, but the Blackfoot people who live in northern Montana will not get that same treatment. To me, that feels very much like how this would be treated through the lens of a conqueror, and not through the lens that is actually there to make genuine reparations for the mistreatment of these people over the years.

Matt Cundill  25:33  
So it's the same issue at podcasting. By the way, there are places in Canada where indigenous don't have access to proper internet to send out video files and large files and even to become successful streamers, because the infrastructure is not

Steve Jones  25:52  
there, right? That's a great point. We haven't figured out how to get clean drinking water to the citizens of out of Scott Ontario, but we're going to mandate the AirPlay of their music on commercial radio. We have yet to solve the actual problems. We're so far downstream trying to solve problems that aren't real problems. It's frustrating if we back the lens out a bit and say, how do we give indigenous people access to the resources to make incredible music? And there's no doubt that those resources are there and would amplify the voices of indigenous music creators. There is no lack of creativity and talent that does not know any racial divide if we, collectively as Canadians, figure out how we can extend those resources to communities that are out of reach of those resources. Right now, if we can bring those programs, those music mentorship programs, and I see organizations doing it and trying very hard, the you know, CMI candidates, music incubator, the lemon Foundation, there's a lot of groups who are taking mentorship programs and music programs to places where they've never been before, and that's great. We need to focus on that. And I guarantee you, if indigenous music creators have access to those resources and create great music, it will get played at commercial radio. But if we start with the mandate to play the music before the music is created, all we're going to do is put music that is not commercially viable on commercial radio, and further put commercial radio at a disadvantage relative to these massive, unregulated foreign streaming giants that are eating up Canadian audiences and advertising money, and they are doing a massive disservice to the Canadian media ecosystem. And I know that on the music side, the creators tend to, you know, look at this differently, but the reality is that a strong Canadian media ecosystem benefits everybody. The money that flows to factor for the creation of music in Canada, in large part comes from radio, and it's tied directly to a percentage of revenue. So a healthy and vibrant radios. You know, ecosystem in Canada means more money for music creators. That's a good thing. But, you know, none of this is as narrow as how radio sees it or how music sees it. These things are all completely interconnected, and we haven't even touched on the role that the CBC could be playing in all this, we're talking about potentially mandating indigenous music on commercial radio. Why would we not start with Canada's public broadcaster, a well funded network that is accessible to almost every Canadian, and that is their mandate. There are transmitters in remote communities all over Canada, bringing CBC and radio Canada to listeners in remote communities, and it's their mandate to reflect Canadian culture in a way that no other media source could. They're not beholden to shareholders, they're not beholden to ratings and revenue. So they have this very unique role to play where they could be the leading force in amplifying indigenous and emerging music creators and giving them a platform where commercial radio comes along and says, yes, we want to be part of that. But that's not getting talked about in these hearings at the CRTC. We're talking about commercial radio, and that's disappointing, because I think the focus really should be on what the CBC should and could be doing to advance this transcription

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Matt Cundill  29:57  
even back up what you're saying just a little bit, because I. Have a little history with this is that when you regulate to play something and it's not ready. And I think of the Our Lady piece album from 2000 I think it was called Spiritual Machines, and it was okay, but we played the crap out of it. And I think we sent a message to our audience by overplaying it, that this is average, and we were reinforcing that it was average. So to your point, if you go to play any form of music that's mandated and not ready, it sends a negative message. And I can count a number of Canadian and can con acts that got overplayed, and I don't think it helped their careers.

Steve Jones  30:40  
I agree. There's some great music. You know, boom. 97 three in Toronto is one of our stations. I listen to it a lot because I live here and because it's a really good radio station. But playing 35% classic hits from the 80s, that can be a challenge, and we end up playing some music that, from a production standpoint, was never ready for prime time. You can tell that the songwriting is really good. There's so many songs where I think to myself, if we could just get rid of that tinny, crappy 80s production, that would be so good. So yeah, there's no benefit to playing music that's not commercially ready. It's the same as pulling a half baked item out of an oven and serving it at a restaurant, the patrons aren't going to come back for another meal because you've served them something that was quite literally half baked. On the other hand, I remember in, I don't know what year it was, maybe Oh, eight Sony or BMG at the time, I can't remember, had crystal Shawanda sign out of Nashville, and they flew a bunch of us down to her showcase in Orlando, and they did the showcase in the Canadian Pavilion at Epcot, and the sense of pride that I felt seeing this indigenous Canadian from just outside Sault Ste Marie perform for a room of American and Canadian programmers of radio stations and see how well her songs were received, that was a very cool moment for Me as a Canadian, and I had just come back from working internationally at that time, I want to feel that again. I would love it. And this is the, this is kind of an ironic What if, but what if a young music creator from a northern reservation, an indigenous music creator, did what Justin Bieber did and got discovered on YouTube? Let's say that Ed Sheeran here is a song by this indigenous creator, and says, come to England with me. Let's record together. And that indigenous music creator goes to England writes a song with Ed Sheeran and another British artist, and they create this incredible song, and it gets released. It wouldn't be can con how messed up is that we're setting ourselves up for some weird failures here if we don't acknowledge simultaneously how to advance indigenous and emerging musicians and how to modernize the Canadian content regulations.

Matt Cundill  32:56  
That brings me to the other inequality, and that's the streamers and so Apple Music and YouTube music and Spotify. How do we

Steve Jones  33:07  
regulate that? Well, that's a great question to ask the CRTC at this point. It seems the answer is, you know, shrug emoji. It's really disappointing, because there is no reason why they could not, to my knowledge, regulate that, you know, like they have for satellite radio. Satellite radio was a tough one to regulate because there's hundreds of channels created in America. So the mandate was, you have to create X number of Canadian channels. They're not going to make Sirius XM, put 35% can con on the lithium channel of alternative rock, but they are going to make Sirius XM create a bunch of Canadian specific channels. So why could every editorial playlist created on Spotify, 35% Canadian be there? Why is that a problem on new music Friday? Why is it a problem if Spotify creates, you know, my daily playlist of 70 soft rock why don't they throw in 35% can cut I guess it's hard to regulate a foreign company. I think there's a risk that Canada is such a small player that those companies say, Screw it. We don't need to be in Canada. We'll just block it out. I don't think that those, the DSPS, the streamers, are, first of all, they're global companies with deep algorithms and tons of metadata, but none of it was ever designed for this. So there would need to be at the streaming level, a complete revamp of the metadata to recognize country of origin. Because right now, country of origin is only recognized in terms of the label that released it, which is not actually connected at all to you know, whether the songs can con or not, like there are tons of songs released by American labels that are can con, and there are Canadian releases by labels here that are American. It's not a direct relationship. So the DSPS would be in a weird place if they were forced to redo all of their meta. Data to do business in Canada, but I'm sorry for the inconvenience we've been living that inconvenience for decades, for 4050 years. Now, 50 years, Canadian radio programmers have been solely responsible for determining what is and is in can con there is no master list of Canadian content songs. People don't realize this, but it's like being told the speed limits 100 kilometers an hour, but there's no speedometer on your car, and if you get busted for speeding, you're losing your license. So we go about, you know, a label submits a song to us for airplay, they tell us that it's Canadian content because of these reasons, we play it as can con, and then the CRTC says, Well, no, it's not actually can con, because there were three writers, and only one of them is Canadian, and we don't think they wrote the bulk of the song, or whatever tiny little piece of minutia that we have no control or knowledge over, and now we're at risk of losing our license because The CRTC deemed that song not to be can kind Another good example is, you know, at the CRTC, they have a staff of analysts, and they analyze the playlists of radio stations when they request them from us, and they they ask us questions about them. For example, we'll submit a week's worth of music logs for a classic hits radio station, and one of the analysts, who probably wasn't into music in 1995 wants to know whether Amanda Marshall really is Canadian. How am I supposed to figure that out? And you go call Amanda Marshall and say, Please send us your passport.

Matt Cundill  36:36  
And that's only one part.

Steve Jones  36:39  
Oh, right, exactly. It's crazy that we have to be held responsible for being, you know, in compliance and making sure the songs are can con if the CRTC wants us to play 35% Canadian content, maintain a database of what qualifies as Canadian content so that we can go in and double check it and make sure that we're living up to the expectation of the regulator, there needs to be a redistribution of the workload, because look the radio industry. I'm a huge believer in the radio industry, but there is no denying the reality that our revenues have gone from 1.6 billion collectively, 1.6 billion 10 years ago, to just under a billion now that's an industry that has been cut gutted, and as a result, we have had to rethink how we do business. Our staffing levels, they've changed dramatically. At radio. No longer are there three or four people working in the music department who can go on and, you know, be the music librarian and respond to the seer. He's gonna timely manner about every single song. Now it's one, you know, one woman who also does mid days on four radio stations and voice tracks the weekend somewhere else, our teams are incredibly busy and stretched and no longer have the administrative capacity to be finding Amanda Marshall's passport. And I don't, I don't use the Amanda Marshall example facetiously. That is a real world example from last year. Analysts at the CRTC have turnover. They're new. They don't have a database to work from. They look at it and go, I don't know if that's Canadian. I'll ask the radio station to do it. Well, that's, that's a big ask for us.

Matt Cundill  38:23  
Yeah, well, I came up with an idea. Anybody is welcome to steal this, because I just don't have time to solve everybody's problems in this business. But you know, we have tools like, you know, BDS media base, and tools like that that identify and can count songs. Well, if you can get all that data and information, and let the radio stations plug into it. We can get real time data about where your station stands with doing can con and to that, we can take it a step further. I'm going to give the radio station a double credit for playing an emerging artist. I'm now going to give you a triple credit for playing it in drive time, so four and five in the afternoon, and I'll give it to you between seven and eight in the morning. Eight in the morning. Give you a triple credit if you play it there a system like that. Okay, that's not a perfect system, but it's pretty

Steve Jones  39:08  
good. Yes, it's pretty good. The idea behind it is exactly what we should be aiming for, which is incentivize, instead of regulating, punish, incentivize and reward. That is how we raise kids. It's how we bonus people at work when they over achieve, it's so much better to do a carrot and stick versus a punishing environment that we're currently in. So I love the idea of saying, Okay, if you're going to over deliver, you know, let's say a song is one part. Can con, another song is four parts can con, maybe you get more credit for playing the four parts can con. And as you said, what if an indigenous artist releases a song maybe that is both emerging and indigenous and gets you even more credit in drive time. What if one radio station contributes a million dollars to factor for music development and another. Station can't afford to do that and contributes only 100,000 but they play 45% Canadian versus the million dollar contributor who plays 25% because they get a break for over delivering in one area and the other broadcaster gets a break for over delivering in another. Not all broadcasters are equal. There are broadcasters in every market who struggle to stay afloat, perhaps they could reduce their financial commitments to the industry by over delivering on the amount of can con they play. I think that if we look at this through an incentive based lens, we will get a much better outcome for artists and the industry.

Matt Cundill  40:37  
The other thing that sends me just hilly is the amount of data that we have that I sit and work with all the time, infinite. Dial your auditorium tests, which I understand that. You know, they're internal, but what if you made them available to the CRTC? Fred Jacobs, Jacobs media, they do text survey. Okay, just give us the Canadian data from that and, you know, share it with the CRTC. This is harsh. I'm gonna sit. The CRTC doesn't care about the listener. They don't care about the listener. There's no representation for the listener at the table.

Steve Jones  41:15  
I think that the CRTC I shouldn't, I don't know. I don't, I can't speak for the CRTC, but I think the CRTC cares about the listeners exposure to Canadian content and Canadian culture and indigenous and emerging culture. I don't think they're particularly concerned with the quality of the listening experience. I think that what would be really cool at the CRTC level is let's have a commercial radio committee that informs the commission of what the issues are commercial radio let's have a music industry committee that informs the commission of the priorities of the music industry. Because I don't think at the commission level, the individuals responsible for these decisions are familiar enough with the granular level struggles of the radio industry or the music industry to be making these very, very consequential decisions on our behalf. I know they're well intentioned. I have a great deal of respect for the commission and the staff and the hard work they do. I think like radio, they're probably overworked and under compensated and just trying to get by each day. I think that the mandate of advancing Canadian culture in the environment we're in has never been harder. So I do have some sympathy for what they have to do. We would all be a little better off, though, if we and that's kind of how we started this discussion, if we had more dialog and understanding of the challenges we all face. You know, in the numerous environment, there's a committee of broadcasters and advertising agencies who help inform numerous of the challenges they face. If we took that same approach to radio, I think the commission might be in a better place to say, wow, we really get it. You guys have gone 1.6 billion 10 years ago. That was kind of a license to print money. It was a good industry to be in. And when they regulated things like mandatory can con and other regulations, it was okay. We could absorb that because, you know, things are good, things aren't good. We still have huge audiences, but we fight a perception that we're a dying industry. We battle that every day, and when we lose audience, and we lose revenue to Spotify and Apple and Amazon and massive foreign unregulated streaming platforms that have no interest or no give a shit about Canadian culture, and we're given very little opportunity to level that playing field. That is frustrating. And I would love for the commission to be able to have greater empathy for the plight of radio. I would also like them to have I'd like radio to have greater empathy for the plight of artists. Because if we could get, and this is like my dream, if we could get representatives from commercial radio, Public Radio, independent music and label music publishers. Let's get us all together. Let's draw a big Venn diagram. Where do we overlap? Because there is an area where we all overlap. Start with that. Where do we mostly overlap? Let's go there, and then let's go back to the commission and say, Hey, we're the ones that are going to be impacted by your regulations, and we all agree on this. That way, the Commission's not put in a place where the radio industry is saying 35% is too much. We want 20% and the music creators are saying 35% is not enough. We want 50. And the regulator says, Okay, well, 35 it is that like we're going to get nowhere if all we do is rely on the CRTC to sort of be a arbitrator of a contract dispute. We have a lot in common on both sides of the ledger with music creation and music distribution, and I think we. Make some serious headway if we all got in a room together and talked it out. You have my number. It's

Matt Cundill  45:04  
also in the show notes of the episode. I'll make sure that it's in there. Here's one that, and I'm using one of your competitors as an example, but I think it's a good one that Josie dye will do a radio show, and her content on radio counts for zero, but she goes to do a TV show, and that counts for Canadian content. That doesn't seem right. All of your staff across the country, hard working, great people. That's all Canadian content, and it counts for zero because it's talk. That's frustrating.

Steve Jones  45:36  
You're right. Every time we open the microphone on every one of our stations. I mean, there's the odd American syndicated program we take, I can't even think of one right now, because we're not running like Ryan Seacrest or anything like that. We don't run Ryan Seacrest. We run, you know, the morning pops up in Ottawa, Bobby bones. No, we don't run Bobby bones. I don't think we run Bobby bones anywhere. Casey Clark out of Cologna, syndicated nationally in evenings across country. Stations in Canada. Paul McGuire out of Toronto, syndicated nationally across country in mid days, the morning hot tub Canadian countdown, the stingray hit list countdown, we run that instead of Ryan Seacrest, you're right every time a Canadian broadcaster turns on a microphone and says, elbows up and reflects Canadian culture, that's a win for Canadian culture, and it gets no credit with the Commission. You could even go a step further and say, What about musicians that create Production Music? Because the musicians that write Production Music are musicians. They make a living, they get royalties. So the music you hear in the background of commercial that might be Canadian. It gets no credit in the can con environment, as it currently stands, there's a whole bunch of ways we could be looking at the holistic content of a radio station and finding ways to document what is and is it Canadian content that isn't all about the music, because as it stands right now, Music is everything and radio. I'm saying this from the naive perspective of radio, and I may be I'm sure I'll be corrected if I'm wrong. Radio carries all the freight for the Canadian music industry. We fund factor and other organizations through CCD funding, millions and millions of dollars a year. That money goes into the creation of music and the promotion of music. So we carry the brunt of the weight when it comes to creating music in Canada, we fund it the most, and then it comes back to us, and we're playing it at 35% when our competitors are playing it at 0% if they want on streaming. So we're now the primary funding of the Creator or the primary outlet for distribution, and we're also an industry that has lost 30 some percent of our revenue in the last decade, and yet we're still tasked with carrying the bulk of the weight. It's a frustrating situation. And I say all this because I think it's important that music creators and labels and others understand where we come from here when we're frustrated, it's not because we don't want to play. Can con we do? You know, I love the fact that the weekend is a global superstar. I love the fact that he came out of Ottawa or Toronto and, sorry, Sal, out of Ottawa. His manager, Sal, and the weekend hustled, and they built a career, and they brought it to LA. And they didn't just bring the weekend to LA, they brought all the weekends people to LA. And now belly and the weekend and all those guys create music that is can come because they write together. That's a beautiful story. I want more of that. I don't want to denigrate or disparage or depress Canadian music. I raise these points because I want desperately to help create a new vision for can con and a relationship between radio and music that is healthy and vibrant for both of us, because we all win what it is, and if we don't change the way we currently do it, we are going to continue to put undue burdens on radio that will continue to see audiences and revenue decline and go to streaming, go to unregulated, foreign competitors, and that will ultimately, it'll be a long, you know, long game play, but that will ultimately do a massive disservice to the Canadian music industry, and I don't want to see that happen.

Matt Cundill  49:26  
Last time you were on this show, you talked about how the rising tide lifts all boats, and that's kind of what we want to do again, is that if radio can find a way to, you know, grow its base and its listenership, then everybody wins.

Steve Jones  49:38  
Yeah, and the regulator can help us greatly with that. Redefining can con Let's, first of all, let's recognize that if an artist is Canadian, everything they do is Canadian. I don't care where they do it or who they do it with. If you're Canadian, you're Canadian. Why is music such an exclusive thing if you're, let's say, an author, and you find your creative inspiration. Writing your romance novel in the Amalfi coast of Italy, and you get it published, and you're a world famous author, you're still Canadian. But why is it Canadian Music can't be made outside of Canada's borders. We can't allow the creative inspiration of the Sahara Desert to get in the way of creating Canadian music. I mean, I don't think that's what we should be focused on artists who are Canadian are Canadian. Let's let's let them carry the flag proudly around the world. Let's let them work with the best and brightest in Nashville and LA and London, and let's celebrate let's stop finding ways to declassify songs as Canadian and start finding ways to classify more songs as Canadian and celebrate Canadian culture at a higher level.

Matt Cundill  50:46  
Conservative Party of Canada spent 2.7 million with meta during the election campaign. The liberal party 2.4 million mark. Carney 1.3 million. And meanwhile, there's Bill C 11 and C 18, which prevent your radio stations from promoting themselves on Facebook, because the legislation is sort of was haphazard and poorly written. I refuse to call it a censorship bill. It is not a censorship bill. It's just a bad piece of legislation. But this is the end result, and how frustrating is that to see all that money go to somebody that they've already targeted as a problem?

Steve Jones  51:26  
Yeah, I will see this. Those political parties spent millions on Canadian media as well, and I will give them a pass on the idea that there are no Canadian social networks of any scale, and that's unfortunate. Maybe that highlights an opportunity, maybe that highlights an area where the government could play a role in fostering a Canadian social media network of scale. But all that aside, it sucks to watch. Our estimate was 6.5 million over the last 30 days on meta alone, and this is the last 30 days of the campaign. That doesn't include the millions spent in the months leading up to that campaign that went directly to Mark Zuckerberg, company, the one that has been most fighting that legislation, Google, at least, has come to the table and played meta. Won't distribute our news content to Canadians on their platforms. Zuckerberg has clearly positioned himself to be aligned with the Trump administration, like so many other tech giants have in the past year. And at the same time as we're being told to check your mustard for made in Canada, our political parties are dropping, you know, millions and millions of dollars into the American economy to an organization that has essentially said we're your enemy. So yeah, while I get that that money couldn't have been spent on a Canadian equivalent, it's a sucker punch, and that 6.5 million would have been really well received at Canadian media. And I don't mean it at my company, I I mean at any Canadian digital print, radio, TV, any outlet that could have taken that money, would have been thrilled podcasters too.

Matt Cundill  53:09  
Yeah, and I have podcasters in my network who are frustrated greatly at this. You know, who gets called news and who does not get called news? It's very frustrating. My idea, by the way, is to levy a four or 5% tax on any purchase of ads with Facebook and have that money redirected to those channels that you mentioned earlier on,

Steve Jones  53:30  
yep, or conversely, provide a tax incentive. The other way, when you advertise with Canadian media outlets, there's got to be a way, much like you mentioned about the can cut system. Let's incentivize the behavior we want to see, instead of trying to be punitive when we see the behavior we don't like.

Matt Cundill  53:51  
We do have a listener question, and this comes from Sean Ross. Sean Ross would like to know when Dolly Parton's Jolene will get played as a classic hit across the stingray stations.

Steve Jones  54:06  
I love Sean. He is one of the brightest minds in music. We're lucky to work with him. One of the things I've taken away from working with Sean is this idea of the eternal jukebox, which I love, this idea that there's a group of songs of which Jolene by Dolly Parton is one of them that kind of form the cohort of songs everybody knows and everybody loves, and you don't know what's going to end up in the eternal jukebox, because it's eternal. There are songs that were never hits like violent femmes blister in the sun, or a song like 500 miles by The Proclaimers, or Jolene by Dolly Parton that somehow end up in our psyche at a much deeper level than they ever were when they were released as singles. And Sean is one of the greatest people I know at finding those songs and understanding what they mean culturally. It's pretty cool. Yeah. Steve,

Matt Cundill  55:00  
you've been really generous with your time today. I really appreciate just going deep on this. I think it's super, super important whether you know we're talking about can con can regs, Bill C 11, Bill C 18. Yeah, we all got to get together and really figure this out, because it will just make us all better.

Steve Jones  55:17  
Yeah, thank you for the opportunity to share these thoughts. I you know, I worry that by voicing these concerns this way, I'm somehow perceived as anti Canadian or anti indigenous or anti emerging artist. I am genuinely none of those things. Nothing would make me happier than collectively Canadian media and music coming up with a system that allowed all of us to thrive at a higher level. I'm just critical of the current system because I think it doesn't do any of us the service that it should be doing. It

Matt Cundill  55:49  
reminds me of the stale milk in the back of the fridge that nobody wants to touch and throw out.

Steve Jones  55:53  
Yeah, well, it's good that we're smelling the milk, and we'll see where we go.

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  55:58  
The sound off podcast is written and hosted by Matt Cundill, produced by Evan serminsky, edited by Taylor MacLean, social media by Aiden glassy, another great creation from the sound off media company. There's always more at sound off podcast.com you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai