The Western Canadian Music Alliance (WCMA) and BreakOut West, Western Canada’s largest music industry event, and Byta, the platform for securely sending digital audio files and streams, are excited to announce that they will partner to present a five part series titled #HowWeListen. Beginning in January 2021, these will be conversations focused on music discovery with representatives from within the music industry. Five discussions, each focusing on different genres of music creation: Folk, Country, Hip-Hop, Francophone and Rock/Indie.
How industry insiders listen to and discover new music is one of the most important things for artists and their teams to understand. These are the insights artists require in order to properly craft pitches and to target how potential audiences might hear about them.
Hosted by music industry veteran and Byta’s founder, Marc Brown, each discussion will consist of three special guests who work deep within Western Canada’s music industry. A diverse line up of voices will join the conversations including Jordan Sowumni (Boosie Fade), Jim Cresman (Invictus), Mariel Buckley (Artist), Nathan Stein (Dine Alone Records), David ‘Click’ Cox (CLK Creative Works), Cartel Madras (Artist) and more. These conversations will divulge actionable insights into how people working in every level of the music industry consume, discover, and experience new music.
The #HowWeListen series is scheduled to launch January 27 at 11 a.m. CT, with the first panel focusing their attention on Indie Rock music. Each month BreakOut West and Byta will present a new panel discussion with the last and fifth instalment taking place in April.
This is a great opportunity to help you start building a stronger and more effective strategy, no matter the style of music you create or work with.
Panel discussion date are as follows:
January 27 – Rock/Indie
February 17 – Country
March 3 – Hip Hop
March 24 – Francophone
April 7 – Folk
The Western Canadian Music Alliance is a pan western organization created by the Music Industry Associations (MIA’s) of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, The Northwest Territories, the Yukon Territory, to promote and celebrate western Canadian music. WCMA, with the financial support of each provincial and territorial government partner, FACTOR, the Government of Canada and of Canada’s private radio broadcasters, WCMA annually hosts their core artist and industry development event, BreakOut West. The event is held in a different western Canadian city on a rotational basis and is the prime music industry event in western Canada. BreakOut West 2021 will be held October 13-17 in Winnipeg, MB, including a four-day music conference, a three-night multi-genre music festival and the Western Canadian Music Awards and Industry Awards programs.
WCMA’s head office is in Winnipeg. We recognize the ancestral lands, from Treaty One Territory, the original lands of Anishinaabeg, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, and Dene peoples, and the homeland of the Métis Nation.
Byta (“Bee-tah”: the Swedish word for exchange) is run as a distributed team across three continents. Byta is unrivaled in taking advantage of the unique properties found in audio files – reading and writing file metadata, converting file formats and delivering fast yet secure streaming. Byta recently launched their #HowWeListen not-for-profit, dedicated to providing musicians and their teams with the knowledge required to move their careers forward.
