Conference and Export Readiness with Emy Stantcheva

So at Music Ontario, I was wondering if you can give a bit of a broad introduction for folks who aren't familiar with the role of a provincial or territorial music industry association, what generally they do for the community, for the music industry, and how people can get involved.

Yeah, that's a great question.

Because for

the first six months of my job, I really didn't know either.

It takes a hot minute to figure it out.

So Music Ontario is part of a network of music industry associations.

You might also hear them being called provincial music associations.

And there is one, I think, for every province and territory, except for Nunavut, which has kind of stopped and started.

But I think the goal and hope is that they will have one that's operational eventually and our role is to essentially work to develop the local and emerging music sector so that could be artists that could be emerging professionals that could be helping students figure out the next step from learning to a workplace and that happens in many ways because obviously people are various different stages so we do that with panels with workshops with networking showcasing trying to connect people to each other to resources We just do a lot of advocating for folks.

And I like to call it the first line of defense.

We're kind of part of an invisible network of people who are on your side, regardless of stage of career.

And that includes your collectives and unions and that kind of thing.

So that's just kind of our job, meet you where you're at and try to help you get to that next level of your career, whatever that might be.

And I think my favorite way of looking at it is that we want to help people build sustainable careers.

What that means is different to everybody.

Some people might be looking for that superstardom and being on all the late night shows and whatnot.

And some people just want to be able to tour and play music and make a comfortable living out of that where they can support themselves and their families and their future ambitions.

So that's kind of in a nutshell what these organizations do, including Music Ontario.

And then we do some exporting as well.

So we travel to key markets to try and present showcases to buyers and help people achieve their objectives in those markets.

That's

quite a bunch of things.