North by East West is Go

The new Canadian music blog NxEW is up and running. That means, to an extent, I'll be dividing my time and yes I'll still be posting music stuff here, but not as much as there.

NxEW is an attempt to bring together music lovers from all over Canada on a single blog. As I wrote in the 'About' section:

Canada has been called unworkable as a country, it has been said that a geographically impossible country. With a population roughly the size of California and a land mass larger than the U.S. or China Canada is divided by vast empty spaces, by immense mountain ranges, by harsh winters and of course by language. Add to all of that the fact that most major Canadian population centers are closer to the US than they are to the next major Canadian population center and there are very few things that unite Canada.

Much to the chagrin of Stephen Harper much of what ties Canada together is cultural. The CBC, certain Canadian authors and most especially music. CBC Radio 3's New Music Canada site houses profiles of thousands of Canadian recording artists from every part of the country. Cities like St. John's, Moncton, Charlottetown, Guelph and Sudbury (all of which are smaller than Springfield, Missouri) have thriving, vibrant music scenes. The large cities of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver are essentially perpetual music festivals - a recent count in Toronto showed 326 musical acts playing 37 venues and that was just a normal week (the week before Canadian Music Week).

Thousands of Canadian artists criss cross the country, despite the geography, all year round serving as kind of cultural ambassadors between the maritimes and the oil patch, between the prairies and Ontario, between Ontario and the west coast and form a sort of disbursed community among Canadian music lovers.

NxEW, takes it's name from the NxNE and SxSW festivals but demonstrates both the geographical issues of Canada as well as the relative unimportance of Geography in the internet age.

The hope is to bring together music lovers from across Canada, from the east and the west, the prairies and the north, from small towns and big cities to talk about music - what's going on nationally and what's going on locally. In other words to create a Canadian music blog with "boots (or sneakers) on the ground" in every part of the country.

So, if you get a chance check it out. Also still looking for writers and the Facebook group is over here.

the New, New Music

As readers of this blog know Publicbroadcasting.ca touches on a variety of things - Canadian art, culture, public broadcasting, politics, journalism and other. As most of you also know, or will have noticed. I have a particular soft spot for music. There is always more going on than I have time for. I could do 20-30 posts a day about music alone. Sadly I don't have the time to do that, so I'm asking for help and launching a new project, along with a new site and I'm looking for a lot of help.

Once registration is verified and I have time to build the site I will be launching North by East West (NXEW) - an obvious if geographically impossible play on the SXSW and NXNE festivals. The hope is to cover Canadian music with a network of bloggers and a rapid fire micro-blogging style. (Not as micro as Twitter, I don't think Twitter will have a long life but that's another topic for another day.) I'm aiming for something closer to Boing Boing - a paragraph or two of info, maybe a quote and links plus media where possible (video, audio, pics etc). So it will cover upcoming shows and tours, new releases, hilight articles from other spots, new videos (including live video) etc., etc.,

What I am looking for is bloggers, lots of bloggers. As I've said the posts will be short, it won't take much time and will allow you to talk about what's going on locally. Ideally I'd like to have people from every major population centre in Canada (even some in the US if there are people there content to talk about Canadian music pretty exclusively.) There is no funding in place. That may come down the road but such is the way of new media that it first needs to demonstrate value and find an audience.

Pretty much everyone is eligible. It seems to me that many of the most knowledgeable people about Canadian music are involved with it and that everyone has their bias' - some just hide it better than others. So I'm not too worried about conflict of interest (this is music not politics.) Having said that if you decide to participate and if you decide to say that "_________ is the best new band in Canada" do make it clear that you're their bass player (or whatever.)

If you are interested in participating you can, for the time being, say so in the Facebook group NxEW.ca should be, to some degree, up this week.

Renegade Book Promoter Interview With Book Ninja

Just a quick note to point out the excellent (and short) interview with outlaw serial book promoter Julie Wilson of Seen Reading over at Bookninja.

""Publishing is a crazy gig. It's akin to sending a message in a bottle out to sea. We have an idea of when it's plucked from the waters, but not when, or if, it’s ever uncorked. When I post, it’s as if I’m saying that the message has been received. And if you look at reader run communities like Goodreads, Shelfari, or Library Thing there's a clear impulse on the part of those people who are investing in our industry to be seen and heard. Seen Reading attempts to speak to everyone, from the creator to the consumer. That the third part of each entry - the first being a physical description of the reader and their location, the second being a passage from the page number they were reading - is my own creative response to the reader is to suggest that as singular as each story may be, the reader’s own personal experience will reinvest in its telling. That’s where the magic happens.""

There is still, so far as I know, no response from Chapters/Indigo. Support your local, independent bookseller!

New Feeds Added

A whole ton of new feeds added today:

Band Blogs

• Megan Hamilton

CanBlogs

• -30- From the Front Lines of Canada's Media

Calgary

• If Necessary Blogging But Not Necessarily Blogging

CanCasts

• Electric Boogaloo

Music Blogs

• Electric Boogaloo


• Toronto Music Blog Collective

Ottawa

• Elgin Street
  Irregulars

Performing Arts

• Backstage Pass: National Ballet of Canada

Saskatoon

• Save Our Prairie

Sudbury

• Sudbury Against War and Occupation

Toronto

• Big City Lib Strikes Back


• Dear Toronto


• Electric Boogaloo


• Green 13


• Humble Empire


• Toronto Music Blog Collective

Vancouver

• Frances Bula: State of Vancouver


• Vancity Buzz: Vancouver Blog

Visual Art and Design

• northpublik: design above the 44th parallel

Video

• Dear Toronto


• Ember Cat


• Humble Empire


• MayleePooFace (Maylee Todd)


• Pancake Mix


• Retro Ontario


• Secret City Records


• This Hour Has 22 Minutes

Windsor

• Alan Halberstadt

WTF is Laura Barrett doing in the Yukon?

Ok, so maybe you didn't know she was in the Yukon, but she is and if you want to know why or what she's doing there, there is a Blog on Eclaim! that will explain it all to you and give you updates on what she's up to.

"For the month of February, I'm living in Dawson City, Yukon as the DCMF Songwriter-in-Residence. Dawson's winter population is even smaller than the 1300 listed in the census, so it's a bit of a change for city-girl me! It's also been going hitting -40 Celsius, meaning up to 20 minutes of layering before going outside. While I'm here, I'll be playing a couple of concerts, and working with grade schoolers at Robert Service School. If I have any free time, I plan to volunteer with the Yukon Quest dog sled race. Let's see how much I can get done in 7 hours of daily light!"

Ok, it's only blog-like - there is no XML feed to tell you when it's been updated, and the ads are a little much but ... alot of Canadian media sites only kind of get the web thing half way and it's the best way to keep up with Laura's doings in the cold!

Laura Barrett - Robot Ponies



Concept by Laura Barrett and Ajay Mehra - Directed by Jared Sales and Laura Barrett - Art Direction and Postproduction by Chris de Castro - Camera by Brian Nugent, Ajay Mehra and Jared Sales

New Feeds Added

Band Blogs

$100

Violent Kin

Music Blogs

Sixeyes: by Alan Williamson

Music Business

Audio Blood

News

Another Point of View

Grumpy Voter

New handbook for cyber-dissidents

Via Art Threat comes word that there is a new edition of the 'Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-dissidents' the guidbook published by Reporters Without Borders

"The handbook offers practical advice and techniques on how to create a blog, make entries and get the blog to show up in search engine results. It gives clear explanations about blogging for all those whose online freedom of expression is subject to restrictions, and it shows how to sidestep the censorship measures imposed by certain governments, with a practical example that demonstrates the use of the censorship circumvention software Tor."

The new handbook is available here.

Added to Feeds

Band Blogs

Gianna Lauren

Josh Reichmann / Oracle Band

Valerie Gore

Music Blogs

Vallery Gore

Can Blogs

Quoteflections

News and Politics

If necessary blogging but not necessarily blogging

In the House and Senate

Boost: New Media

Earlier today I mentioned the other Boost Groups. This one kindof completes the set. It will be the last for awhile, perhaps the last altogether but I've just created Boost: New Media: This one deals with new media in the broad sense: That is to say it is for content that is only available online podcasts, video podcasts, video games, internet radio, web tools and more. In other words it is about Canada's rapidly exploding digital world. Once a week I will send out a new email pointing you to a new online treasure that is either wholly Canadian or has heavy Canadian involvement. (This is the internet after all, it crosses borders frequently.)

I'll also include a blog of the week, it may not be an "art" but it is media and has become an important one. As with the other Boost groups I'll let it grow for awhile before sending anything out, feel free to sign up and spread the word if you're interested.

New Feeds

I have a long list of stuff to look at, but for now these are the newest feeds added. More will be coming soon and, as always, suggestions are welcome.

Music Business

Down By the Point Records

Endearing Records

Grumpy Cloud Records

Out of Touch Records

Band Blogs

Cam Malcolm and the Owls

News

April Reign

BigCityLib Strikes Back

GrannyRantsOn

Progressive Economics Forum

Thwap's Schoolyard

New Canadian Media Guild Blog

Lise Laeau, President of the Canadian Media Guild has launched a new blog called Newsshift with the preamble

It's not the time for us to stay quiet
You may feel increasingly muzzled at work, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't - and don't - have thoughts and ideas about what is going on in our industry. Independent, diverse and well-resourced media are the lifeblood of democracy. This is one place to discuss what the media is not covering about itself and to share comments and ideas, anonymously or not.

The first post is on the economic crisis in the media and covers some of the many layoffs that have arisen out of the current recession.

"What’s not being told is that a perfect storm is battering virtually every North American media company. And bigger is not really better. Many that went on acquisition frenzies over the past decade (see Canwest, Tribune Co.) are so mired in debt they can’t deal with either the recession or the declining ad market for traditional media (TV, radio, newspapers). No one knows when and if they’ll ever be able to “monetize” the internet to make up for the massive losses in their bread-and-butter advertising.

South of the border, Tribune Co. filed for bankruptcy protection in early December. Gannett, which owns USA Today and 85 other newspapers in the United States, has announced that it is forcing thousands of employees to take an unpaid week off this quarter. Detroit’s two newspapers announced they’re going to cut home delivery to only three days a week.

Feel free to weigh in on Lise's questions if you have ideas. Personally I'm not sure what to say. I'm certainly in favor of greater CBC funding. Having said that the old models for media - print, radio, television and film are dead or dying and they aren't coming back, regardless of the economy. Each 'media outlet' (and there are now millions) is going to have to find their own way without any proven formulas or models and I have only met a handful of people in Canada who really seem to understand the current climate, the technology and the direction things are likely to take.

Once again I'll say that it does no good at all to know where the ball is and run for it, by the time you get there it will be gone. You have to be able to figure out where the ball is headed and get there before it does and there are few among the leadership in media that seem to grasp this. For the most part they seem to be standing where the ball used to be and hoping it will come back.

The audience for any media outlet is now global, according to Alexa publicbroadcasting.ca is now the 255,385th most popular website in India, cbc.ca is #1,352 in the world and in the top 4,000 sites in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, India and China. The potential for the future in this climate is huge, but you have to completely forget how things used to be and, as always, you will sink or swim based on the quality of your content.

More on Herohill's Great Canadian Mixtape Project

Last week I posted on Herohill's Great Canadian Mixtape Project apparently I'm way way behind on it. In addition to Manitoba there are mixtapes up for Nova Scotia, Ontario, New Brunswick, Alberta and Quebec links are below and the rest of the mixtapes are on the way.

The Big Doe-nair Rehab (N.S.)

Give Us Our Nickel Back (Ont.)

Ultra-Magnetic...hill (N.B.)

Hoodoo You Think You Are? (AB.)

GOULET! (Que.)

Stay Gold Manitoba, Stay Gold (Man.)

New Feeds Added

Band Blogs

Alright Alright

Black Flies

Owl

Music Blogs

Johnpapa.ca

CanCasts

the Barclay Hour (also added to Edmonton)

Public Transit in Ottawa

Herohill's Great Canadian Mixtape Project

Just in case you don't read Herohill there's a Great Canadian MixTape project underway with a Manitoba 'CD' ok it's not really a CD, it's a bunch of MP3s and album art if you want it. You can download a zip file of the whole thing with songs from from the Western States, Paper Moon, Boats!!, Grand Analog, the Weakerthans, a Ruby Jean and the Thoughtful Bee's Remix from Oldfolks Home and way more, or you can just

You can find out all about it at http://www.herohill.com/2009/01/great-canadian-mixtape-project-manitoba.htm and check back often or just subscribe to the feed. Saskatchewan is apparently up next!

Canadian Blogger Arrested in Tehran

Via CBC comes word that Canadian-Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan has been arrested in Tehran. Derakhshan, author of Editor Myself, which has been included in the news and politics section of publicbroadcasting.ca for some time has drawn fire from both Tehran and Washington over the years.

International human rights groups and media reports said Derakhshan, a former Toronto resident, was arrested on Nov. 1.
"His case is in a preliminary investigative stage at a revolutionary court and he is currently in incarceration at a jail in Tehran," Jamishid said, giving no further explanation of the charges against Derakhshan.
In Iran, revolutionary courts handle national security matters.
Known as "the blogfather" for his pioneering efforts at helping Iranian bloggers post welblogs in the Persian language, Derakhshan was both an outspoken critic of the clerical regime in Tehran, and supportive of his homeland's controversial nuclear program.
In his blog Editor: Myself, he wrote that Iran had the right to defend itself from what he called "U.S. aggression."

There has so far been no response from Foreign Affairs.

Torontoist is Un Cancelled

Much thanks to Julianna Yau for the tip: David Topping, Editor-in-Chief at Torontoist announced today that due to overwhelming public support Torontoist isn't going away after all.

"...a lot has changed for the better in the past week and a half, and a lot now seems possible for the site's future that wasn't before. And while Torontoist does not yet have the financial support it needs, we do have the support of our readers and our city, and that is what we've always needed most. So I'm happy to announce that up to, through, and past January 1, Torontoist will continue as Torontoist, with its existing name, existing contributors, and new content. (And, for now, it will continue to be supported technically and sustained financially by Gothamist.) It won't just be business as usual: it is the entire staff's shared mission to give the site one big concerted push, one that will see us in far better shape in six month's time and that should ensure not just our survival but our growth and success. We're going to do what we can to make Torontoist better than ever. It might, of course, not work. But we're not done—not yet."

This, to me, does not change the fact that Torontonians need to support their own more than we do. It is especially difficult for blogs. I've looked into some of the revenue possibilities for publicbroadcasting.ca and none of them were acceptable. Most would have required me to put up intrusive ads for products I wouldn't buy or to put up blog posts endorsing things I don't like and pretending they weren't ads at all. Some, such as google ads, would have paid so little as to not be worth the column space (50,000 hits in a month would have gotten me near the break even point.) So it will e interesting to see how Torontoist goes about becoming more financially viable but the key thing is that they are still here, for now.

New Feeds Added

Another batch of new additions to publicbroadcasting.ca's aggregators this morning.

Band Blogs

Andy Swan

Glenn Nuotio

Jill Zmud

Whale Tooth

Music Blogs

Juicebox.com

CanBlogs

Things That Go Pop!

A Golden Age for Independent Meda and Web 2.0?

In case you haven't noticed there is a recession on. A pretty good one too. Some economists are even starting to use the D word (the one that ends in epression and that drugs don't help.) As a result, when companies started cutting costs one of the first things to go was advertising. So traditional media companies are cutting jobs all over the place, even the blog Torontoist is set to close it's doors on January 1.

Now before anyone gets the impression that I'm happy about this, I'm not. I have alot of friends in traditional media and am worried for them. This is more of an observation of things likely to come based on the present reality:

Back to where I was going; Media that is dependent on large amounts of revenue and advertising is in for a rough ride and as media goes the internet is rapidly becoming the most essential and the last one that people will give up. It is, after all, in it's current state capable of being a library, newspaper, television, movie theatre, radio, telephone etc., all in one. Even without our current economic problems traditional media has been catering to smaller and smaller niches, newspapers are already in trouble, large movie studios and music labels have been trying to figure out how to survive in the internet era.

Having laid all of that out, it's also undeniable that the biggest media growth in the last several years has been online - blogging, podcasting, social media etc., have exploded and unlike traditional media no revenue is the norm. A decline in ad revenue has almost zero impact and, unlike other media business actually appears poised to spend more money on social media in 2009.

The other growth has been in the independent and it's been going on for awhile, in film the Sundance festival took on Hollywood blockbusters with intelligent film with substance. In Music independent music has exploded. Despite the decline of the major labels the number of CDs produced is up more than 1000% (not kidding) in the last 10 years and that doesn't even count the stuff that is being released digitally and distributed online.

So these trends, the rise of the amateur and the indie and the decline of the big and corporate are already underway. Now we're going into a period where the big and corporate are going to have to learn to work on the same budgets of the small and indie.

The great depression brought a boom in media as people sought fun and escapism. Jazz, already rising in the 20s burst into the mainstream and Hollywood, already on the rise enjoyed it's first golden age.

It is very likely that the current economic downturn will see a similar surge in media,. People will need their escape. Because of rising unemployment more people will have more time on their hands but their entertainment will have to be inexpensive. Where or when this surge happens remains to be seen but from the perspective of the small, the indie, the amateur, the sincere but underfunded there appears to be a perfect storm brewing (in a good way.) A reversal of the trends of the last decade, giving current economic conditions, appears unlikely.

Calgary from a Hip Hop Perspective

The folks in Dragon Fli Empire have launched a new blog promising "Calgary from a hip hop perspective". That's a promise I believe and something Canada could use. I've added it to the Music Blogs and Calgary.

Dragon Fli Empire ft. Cadence Weapon - Outside Inn

Torontoist to Close on January 1

According to a Dave Topping yesterday Torontoist, after thousands of posts and millions of visitors, is shutting down:

At the end of this month, I will be stepping down as Torontoist's Editor-in-Chief. I've loved everything about this job since I started it, and my decision to leave was not an easy one to make, but it is, ultimately, the right one at the right time for the right reasons. Gothamist has decided, as a result of both my resignation and the recession, to close Torontoist on January 1, 2009 and concentrate on their more lucrative American sites. That decision is the right one, too: as it exists now, Torontoist can barely be sustained, let alone developed, and it has survived and thrived as long as it has, in spite of modest means, largely because of the ceaseless hard work of that aforementioned collective. Torontoist may return at some later date, if conditions are different; until then, it will remain in suspended animation, its content still public and searchable.

It would appear that even in the blogosphere that collaborations between Canadian and US media simply do not work. If Canadians want th;eir own culture, their own media and their own stories told it must be created, maintained and supported in Canada.

One of the things, I think, that has kept publicbroadcasting.ca going this long is that there is no business model. There is no revenue, no donations, and no paid staff. It was designed this way on purpose because Canadians interest in themselves is simply not there yet and if you plan on having no revenue, you can't be driven out of business. It is also impossible to 'buy influence'. Hopefully, one day, more Canadians will be interested in Canada, more Torontonians will be interested in Toronto and Torontoist will return and thrive. If any of you have an interest in contributing here, knowing that it won't pay, feel free to get in touch.