Canadian Music Week’s International Buyer’s Program will be featuring a spotlight on Australia & focus on New Zealand for 2015. During the conference schedule from May 6-9, the International Buyer’s Program will bring together market experts, key buyers, industry reps across sectors together with representatives from the Canadian music industry.
With assistance from the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Canada, delegates from both Australia and New Zealand will access export market training sessions, share expertise and insights while creating the opportunity for new trade routes and revenue generation potential.
Organizers at CMW have just announced the first round of speakers for this year’s International Buyer’s Program:
Spotlight on Australia – Mission Participants
Michael Gudinski (Frontier Touring)
Graham Ashton (Footstomp Music)
Dave Batty (Artist Voice)
Michael Chugg (Chugg Entertainment)
Ian James (Mushroom Music Publishing)
Brett Murrihy (Artist Voice)
Susan Heymann (Chugg Entertainment)
Kelly Breuer (The Brouhaha)
Dean Ormstron (APRA/AMCOS)
Damian Cunningham (National Live Music Office)
Dan Rosen (Australian Recording Industry Association)
Danny Rogers (Lunatic Entertainment)
Focus on New Zealand – Mission Participants:
Peter Baker (Rhythmethod)
Scott Maclachlan (Saiko Management)
Ben Howe (Laneways Festival)
Teresa Patterson (CRS Music Management)
Dylan Pellett (Independent Music New Zealand)
Are you planning to attend SXSW this year, which runs from March 17-22, 2015 (SXSW Music) in Austin, Texas? If so, you should definitely join CIMA’s annual business & showcase mission! This year’s mission will mark the 10th year that CIMA will be in attendance for this key showcase and business development opportunity at the most influential and largest music festival & conference in North America. Check out some of the outcomes associated with our mission to SXSW in 2014 here.
Our legendary Canadian Blast BBQ and Canada House at SXSW will be taking place on March 18, 2015. This event, the kickoff for CIMA’s Canadian Blast mission at SXSW, is a high-profile event that draws hundreds of VIP international delegates, media and thousands of SXSW delegates!
Whether you have an artist invited to play at SXSW, or you’re planning to attend as a business then you definitely want to be part of the Canadian Blast initiative!
Some of the many benefits of attending are:
Access to discounted SXSW registration (limited time only).
Business Development and B2B – meet the international delegates that are important to your business.
Country Connections (CIMA in partnership with 6 export offices) round table or speed dating sessions.
Participation in Canada Stand, where you get dedicated space to conduct meetings and do business.
The VIP treatment, including being able to invite your own targeted delegates to the Canadian Blast BBQ and Canada House at SXSW!
Jim Carrey’s portrayal of Andy Kaufman was so good, you’ll wonder why he had to audition for the role.
Fun Fact: The soundtrack for the film was written by R.E.M., whose 1992 song “Man on the Moon” (originally written in honor of Kaufman) gave the film its title. The soundtrack also included the Grammy-nominated song “The Great Beyond,” which remains the band’s highest-charting single in the United Kingdom.
A lot of times in interviews, people ask me things like, “How does it feel now? What have you bought your mom and your pops and family?” Nobody ever really asks about what it’s like trying to adapt to fame and money and how much of a depression it can make for you. How much of a depression it could put you in knowing that so many kids hang on to your words. I can’t make a song like “i” without being in that dark place. “i” comes from going overseas, going to New York, being in L.A. and hearing kids saying, “Kendrick, I was gonna kill myself last week. Section.80, good kid, m.A.A.d city saved my life.” Or “I was gonna kill myself tonight until I came to your show.”
I believe that they are telling the truth. At first I wasn’t so sure, maybe it was just they were excited to meet me. But then they showed me their wrists and had all these different scars from when they tried to take their lives but failed. Or I look into their eyes and their pupils are dilated and they on all these types of meds and drugs, it’s a whole different story to me. That’s when I learned that while I’m making music for myself, drawing from my own experiences and conflictions and battles within myself, this teenager listens to every word I say. And that’s spooky.
I think one of my biggest battles within myself is embracing leadership. You always grow up and you hate the term “role model.” You would say, “I don’t wanna be a role model. I don’t want none of that.” But in actuality, you are the biggest role model. It’s impossible to fight the title of role model. Especially when the type of music I make is so personal. People feel like they can relate to me or that they are me. They feel like they know my whole life story even though we from different worlds. So when I go out and meet them in public, I don’t get a response like, “Kendrick, will you sign this real quick?” Or, “I wanna just take this picture with you.” No, they want to have full conversations. I find out that they live their lives by my music and that right there is something.
WhatsApp, the messaging app Facebook acquired for $19 billion in February 2014, has recently passed the 700 million user mark, the company’s co-founder and CEO Jan Koum announced in a Facebook post yesterday. According to Koum, more than 30 billion (!) messages are sent via WhatsApp every day, alongside hundreds of millions of photos and videos that are shared within the app.
Since WhatsApp last shared its user number in August 2014, the service added another 100 million to its impressively large user base. WhatsApp even managed to grow quicker than its parent company Facebook once did. Between March 2009 and April 2011, it took Facebook 25 months to grow its active user base from 200 to 700 million – WhatsApp managed to do so in just 21 months, as our chart illustrates.
Considering the unrelenting pace of its user growth, it seems like a matter of time until WhatsApp replicates one of its parent company’s biggest achievements: reaching a billion monthly active users.
Elvis Presley would have turned 83 today, so here are 83 fun facts about The King!
1. Elvis’ famous black hair was dyed – his natural color was brown. Presley used Miss Clairol 51 D, “Black Velvet.”
2. He also dyed his eyelashes, which caused health problems later in life.
3. Elvis purchased his first guitar when he was just 11 years old. He wanted a rifle, but his mother convinced him to get a guitar instead.
4. In 1947, a local radio show offered a young Elvis (age 12) a chance to sing live on air, but he was too shy to go on.
5. The first time Elvis recorded, it was for his mother. He paid $4 to Sun Studio to press two songs — My Happiness and That’s When Your Heartaches Begin.
6. In 1954, Elvis auditioned for a gospel quartet named the Songfellows. They said no.
7. That same year, a local radio DJ played Elvis’ version of That’s All Right. He went on to play it 13 more times that day, but had trouble convincing his audience that Elvis was white.
8. His breakthrough hit was Heartbreak Hotel, released in 1956 – a song inspired by a newspaper article about a local suicide.
9. When performing on TV in 1956, host Milton Berle advised Elvis to perform without his guitar, reportedly saying, “Let ’em see you, son.” Elvis’ gyrating hips caused outrage across the U.S. and within days he was nicknamed Elvis the Pelvis.
10. A Florida judge called Elvis “a savage” that same year because he said that his music was “undermining the youth.” He was subsequently forbidden from shaking his body at a gig, so he waggled his finger instead in protest.
11. He played only five concerts outside the U.S., all on a 3-day tour of Canada in 1957. Many believe that the reason why he never toured abroad again was that his longtime manager, Colonel Tom Parker, was an illegal immigrant from Holland who would have been deported had he applied for a U.S. passport.
12. Elvis had a slight stutter.
13. Col. Parker is said to have always had an eye for talent and for a quick buck – prior to managing Elvis, Parker reportedly painted sparrows yellow to sell them as canaries.
14. After Elvis’ first TV appearance in 1956, Jackie Gleason said, “The kid has no right behaving like a sex maniac on a national show.”
15. Elvis was 6 feet tall and wore a size 11 shoe.
16. Recording Hound Dog in the studio, Elvis reportedly demanded 31 takes.
17. Elvis bought his mansion, Graceland, in Memphis, TN in 1957 for $100,000. It was named by its previous owner after his daughter, Grace.
18. Performing “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” in Las Vegas in 1969, Elvis did one of his frequent lyric changes to amuse himself. Instead of “Do you gaze at your doorstep and picture me there?”, he sang “Do you look at your bald head and wish you had hair?”
19. In 1965, Elvis talked about entering a monastery.
20. Elvis’ debut album became the first rock-and-roll album to top the Billboard chart, a position it held for 10 weeks.
21. Cultural historian Gilbert B. Rodman argues that the album’s cover image, “of Elvis having the time of his life on stage with a guitar in his hands played a crucial role in positioning the guitar … as the instrument that best captured the style and spirit of this new music.
22. In 1956, he began his film career with a western, Love Me Tender. His second film, Loving You, featured his parents as audience members. Following his mother’s death in 1957, he never watched the film again. He went on to make a total of 31 movies in his career.
23. In December 1957, Elvis was drafted into the U.S. Army, earning a $78 monthly salary. During his brief two-year stint on active duty, he was unable to access his music-generated income of $400,000.
24. In 1959, while serving overseas in Germany, Elvis (then 24 years old) met his future wife, 14 year-old Priscilla Beaulieu. They were married 8 years later.
25. He recorded 15 songs with “blue” in the title.
26. Research shows that “Elvis” is one of the most popular passwords for computers.
27. He hated fish and wouldn’t allow Priscilla to eat it at Graceland.
28. Elvis’ first appearance on The Steve Allen Show, on September 9, 1956, was seen by approximately 60 million viewers — a record 82.6 percent of the television audience.
29. Elvis’ 1960 hit “It’s Now or Never” so inspired a prisoner who heard it in jail that he vowed to pursue a career in music upon his release. The artist, Barry White, was then serving a 4-month sentence for stealing tires.
30. Elvis started wearing a chai necklace because his mother, Gladys’ maternal grandmother was Jewish — the reason he added a Star of David on his mother’s gravestone.
31. Elvis and Priscilla’s only daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, was born in 1968. Lisa Marie later married Michael Jackson and actor (and Elvis obsessive) Nicholas Cage. Mr. Cage is reportedly the only person outside of Presley’s immediate family to have ever seen Elvis’ Graceland bedroom.
32. Following his divorce from Priscilla in 1972, Elvis was said to have allowed ‘good-looking girls’ who waited outside Graceland to enter afterhours.
33. In the 1970s, Elvis would start every concert with Also Sprach Zarathustra, a 19th-century Richard Strauss tone poem and the theme of the 1968 movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.
34. Elvis’ popularity faded in the 1960’s with the rise of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and others. He successfully relaunched his career with a 1968 television special that came about because Elvis had walked down a busy Los Angeles street and had no one recognize or approach him.
35. He was distantly related to former U.S. Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Jimmy Carter.
36. In the early 1970s, Elvis would impersonate a police officer, driving around with a blue light, flashlight, a billy club and guns, and pulling people over. Instead of tickets, he would hand drivers autographs.
37. Elvis recorded more than 600 songs, but did not write any of them.
38. Last year, Elvis was second in the Forbes list of top-earning dead musicians behind Michael Jackson.
39. His estimated earnings for 2012 were $55 million.
40. The name Elvis comes from an Old Norse word meaning SSLqall wise’.
41. Although Elvis’s middle name on his birth certificate was ‘Aron’, his grave has it as ‘Aaron’, which was his own preferred spelling.
42. Elvis had a pet chimp called Scatter, which developed a taste for Scotch and bourbon.
43. It’s not clear where Scatter is buried. Some think the hard-drinking animal died of liver disease; others say he was poisoned by a maid he had bitten.
44. Elvis had a pet turkey. His name was Bowtie.
45. He also owned a basset hound, two great Danes, a chow chow, a Pomeranian, several horses, some donkeys, some peacocks and guinea hens, ducks, chickens, a chimpanzee, a monkey and a mynah bird.
46. His golden palomino quarter horse, Rising Sun, is buried at Graceland.
47. St Elvis is a small parish in Pembrokeshire named after the Irish bishop St Ailbe, also known as Elvis of Munster, who died in 528.
48. After receiving a kidnap-assassination threat, Elvis performed with a pistol in each of his boots.
49. The minor planet 17059 Elvis was discovered by Australian astronomer John Broughton in 1999 and named after Elvis Presley.
50. Viewers in the United Kingdom did not see the worldwide Aloha From Hawaii special because the BBC refused to pay the price for the 1972 concert.
51. Elvis’s only TV commercial was for Southern Made Doughnuts in 1954. His only line of dialogue was: You get ’em piping hot after 4am.
52. At the age of 36, Elvis Presley became the youngest recipient of a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
53. His entourage was referred to as the Memphis Mafia. All members wore diamond and gold rings with the letters TCB imprinted which stood for “Take Care of Business.”
54. Despite his huge worldly following, Elvis only performed 5 shows outside the US and all of them were in Canada.
55. Actor Nicolas Cage, who was briefly married to Elvis’s daughter Lisa Marie Presley, was the only person aside from Presley’s immediate family to see the inside of Elvis’s Graceland bedroom.
56. Here’s what Elvis and President Richard Nixon said during their 1970 meeting: “You dress kind of strange, don’t you?” Nixon said, to which Elvis responded, “Well, Mr. President, you got your show, and I got mine.”
57. The meeting was a secret until the Washington Post broke the story a year later.
58. Elvis is the only solo performer to have been inducted into the Rock and Roll, Country, and Gospel Halls of Fame.
59. Col. Tom Parker, Elvis’ personal, business and financial manager, handled Elvis’ entire career from beginning to end.
60. Approximately 600,000 people visit Elvis’s home, Graceland, each year. Graceland was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991.
61. The alphabet positions of the letters in ‘Presley’’ add up to 100.
62. He was nominated for 14 Grammys and won three, receiving the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award at age 36.
63. B.B. King recalled that he had known Presley before he was popular, when they both used to frequent Beale Street. By the time he graduated from high school in June 1953, Presley had already singled out music as his future.
64. The first post-death Presley spotting was in Kalamazoo, Mich., where a woman said she saw him in a grocery store and at a Burger King.
65. When first motion picture, Love Me Tender, was released, he was not top billed.
66. The film’s original title — The Reno Brothers — was changed to capitalize on his latest number one record: “Love Me Tender” had hit the top of the charts earlier that month. Elvis would receive top billing on every subsequent film he made.
67. In his first full year at RCA, one of the music industry’s largest companies, Presley had accounted for over 50 percent of the label’s singles sales.
68. When a journalist referred to him as “The King”, Elvis gestured toward Fats Domino, who was taking in the scene at his Las Vegas shows. “No,” Elvis said, “that’s the real king of rock and roll.”
69. Several of Elvis’ family members had been alcoholics, a fate he intended to avoid.
70. In 1971, an affair Elvis had with Joyce Bova resulted—unbeknownst to him—in her pregnancy and an abortion.
71. Elvis was scheduled to fly out of Memphis on the evening of August 16, 1977, to begin another tour.
72. Between 1977 and 1981, six posthumously released singles by Elvis were top ten country hits.
73. A Junkie XL remix of Presley’s “A Little Less Conversation” (credited as “Elvis Vs JXL”) was used in a Nike advertising campaign during the 2002 FIFA World Cup. It topped the charts in over 20 countries.
74. Elvis holds the records for most songs charting in Billboard’s top 40 and top 100: chart statistician Joel Whitburn calculates the respective totals as 104 and 151.
75. A vast number of recordings have been issued under Presley’s name. The total number of his original master recordings has been variously calculated as 665 and 711.
76. Although some pronounce his surname “PREZ-lee”, Presley himself used the pronunciation of the American South, “PRESS-lee”, as did his family and those who worked with him.
77. VH1 ranked Presley No. 8 among the “100 Greatest Artists of Rock & Roll” in 1998. The BBC ranked him as the No. 2 “Voice of the Century” in 2001. Rolling Stone placed him No. 3 in its list of “The Immortals: The Fifty Greatest Artists of All Time” in 2004. CMT ranked him No. 15 among the “40 Greatest Men in Country Music” in 2005. The Discovery Channel placed him No. 8 on its “Greatest American” list in 2005. Variety put him in the top ten of its “100 Icons of the Century” in 2005. The Atlantic Monthly ranked him No. 66 among the “100 Most Influential Figures in American History” in 2006.
78. Elvis died at his Memphis home, Graceland, on August 16, 1977.
79. Legacy Recordings have planned a yearlong celebration of Presley’s music for modern-day Elvis fans. First up, the singer’s The Complete ’60s Albums Collection Vol. 1 has been released onto iTunes. The set highlights all the LPs Presley recorded between 1960 and 1965 with newly mastered sound for the digital medium.
80. A massive new, 60-disc box set of Elvis Presley’s recordings will come out in the spring. The limited-edition set, Elvis Presley – The Album Collection, compiles 57 albums released between 1956 and 1977, as well as three discs of rarities. It will be available on March 18th, a few days before the 60th anniversary of the release of the King’s debut LP, Elvis Presley.
81. Christmas with Elvis(with Royal Philharmonic Orchestra), released in October, 2017, hit the Billboard Top Album Chart, reaching #71.
82. “I love him. I still love him. I’ve never not loved him. Ever.” – Priscilla Presley
83. Two trademark phrases: “Thank ya!” and “Thank ya’ very much!”
NXNE enters it’s third decade with the appointment of longtime NXNE music programmer Crispin Giles as Creative Director, and by welcoming Sara Peel as the new Managing Director. This new management structure comes into play with the departure of Christopher Roberts as Festival Director.
“We are delighted to build on Christopher’s break through ideas of the last few years and are determined to take NXNE to the level of global importance it is destined to achieve. Crispin and Sara bring great vision and fundamental expertise, essential for the dynamic goals we have set for the festival”, said Michael Hollett, President and Executive Director of NXNE.
Crispin Giles has been the music programmer for NXNE since 2007 and will now lead the creative direction in all Festival streams including Music, Film, Comedy and Art. Prior to NXNE, Crispin worked as a tour manager and venue programmer. Crispin is also a founding member of Tiny Collective, an international photography cooperative.
As the former Manager of Events at Yonge-Dundas Square, Sara Peel brings years of experience managing events of all sizes to The Festival, including NXNE’s legendary annual concerts in The Square such as The Flaming Lips, The National and St. Vincent. Prior to YDS, Sara was Production Manager of Melbourne Fringe Festival, and also worked in various capacities at the Edinburgh Fringe, Adelaide Fringe, and Melbourne International Film Festival. Sara is currently the President of the Board of the Toronto Fringe.
NXNE invites musicians to apply for a chance to be a part of one of the world’s premier music festivals. Submissions will be accepted at www.nxne.com until January 31, 2015.
North by Northeast (NXNE) Festival and Conference is one of the world’s premier festivals. NXNE’s five pillars – Music, Film, Comedy, Art and Interactive – are essential gatherings for artists, industry, and fans. NXNE draws 350,000 attendees and generates an annual economic impact of over $50 million on the city of Toronto.
People equated burning CDs with theft. That’s not what burning CDs is. Theft is about acquiring the music from the Internet. You don’t have to burn CDs to steal music; you just have to go on Kazaa. Why would you have to burn a CD? That’s an extra step. Some people burn a lot of CDs and hand them around the dorm room, but that’s not a lot of the theft. Theft is everybody going to Kazaa on their own. Most of burning CDs is people making custom compilations. That’s a good thing. They want to listen to the tracks they want in the order they want, and as long as they legally acquire those tracks, that’s a good thing. … So the first thing we had to do was really draw a distinction between burning CDs — a good thing — and theft, not a good thing. People want the right to burn CDs. If you tell people they can’t burn CDs of their music, as almost every current legal music service has done, or they can only burn one CD with a track or pay per track per burn extra, nobody is going to go for it. … And frankly, with those kinds of limitations, you might as well put a huge sign that says KAZAA THIS WAY. Because they’re not going to suffer under them. They don’t suffer under them if they buy a CD or if they turn into a thief and go to Kazaa. So you’re not going to win them over by putting up these limitations.
We approached it as ‘Hey, we all love music.’ Talk to the senior guys in the record companies and they all love music, too. … We love music, and there’s a problem. And it’s not just their problem. Stealing things is everybody’s problem. We own a lot of intellectual property, and we don’t like when people steal it. So people are stealing stuff and we’re optimists. We believe that 80 percent of the people stealing stuff don’t want to be; there’s just no legal alternative. So we said, Let’s create a legal alternative to this. Everybody wins. Music companies win. The artists win. Apple wins. And the user wins because he gets a better service and doesn’t have to be a thief.
