Showcase festivals offer hope while highlighting the grind for emerging musicians
CMW and NXNE offer up-and-comers a chance to network and play Toronto venues — for low or no pay
It's showcase season in Toronto, when up-and-coming musicians gather in the city for a chance to take their careers to the next level.
Canadian Music Week (CMW) wraps up today, welcoming hundreds of homegrown artists. And starting Tuesday, North by Northeast (NXNE) will showcase more than 300 performers. For both events, performers are promised a platform and a chance to build their networks in the industry.
It's a competitive field for applicants. Thousands vie for a prize that is more about opportunity than immediate payoff. For some musicians, exposure is the reward. But for others, playing a big stage for low pay — or none at all — is a reminder of how difficult it is to find success.
"It's a long way to the middle if you want to rock and roll," said Luke Bentham, singer and guitarist of Dundas, Ont., band The Dirty Nil.
The band has played both CMW and NXNE over the years. They were a showcase act in both festivals in the early 2010s, and returned as paid headliners at CMW in 2019.
"There's no way to actually make money for a band like ours in those early years," he said. "We couldn't draw very many people and we were aware that we just weren't able to generate much income on the live show front."
Showcasing new talent
While both festivals showcase new talent, their approach is different.
CMW is built around a trade conference that brings industry professionals for dozens of panels.
Showcasing artists pay an application fee of between $25 and $69, depending on when they apply. In exchange, they get access to the conference, which would otherwise cost around $600. There are also paid headlining acts that this year include Charlotte Cardin, Kardinal Offishall and Shawn Desman.
Festival director Andrew Valee says CMW does what they can to make it worth it for bands that don't make the cut.
"They're still being rewarded with as many perks as we could give them," he said. "We always make sure there's festival wristbands being supplied so they can go bounce around the clubs."
NXNE works differently. Last year, the festival scrapped application fees and now all acts are paid $100 per band or $50 for a solo performance.
"Same deal for everybody," said Michael Hollett, founder of NXNE. "This is the socialist music festival, I guess."
Peterborough, Ont.-based Brooklyn Doran has played both festivals and says performing at CMW is almost secondary to the networking.
"One of the things that you could sign up for was basically speed dating," Doran said. "Maybe it was someone who books festivals, maybe it was someone who did [film and TV] sync placements, maybe it was a radio programmer. And those conversations were really valuable."
At NXNE, she says she's booked in spaces that feel less attainable for her to play on her own.
"I found that I had a lot more industry interest from management, booking agents and folks like that coming out to see my shows just because of the cachet of the venues I was playing in," she said.
Making a living
Barbra Lica played Canadian Music Week in 2015 and 2017, and this year was invited back to be a mentor. She asked for $100 in compensation, but organizers offered a conference pass instead. She declined.
"The people coming as mentees are these young, impressionable, emerging artists and then I'm somebody on the other side who has over a decade of experience," Lica said. "I didn't feel comfortable setting up an environment for them where 10 years from now they're doing unpaid work at a for-profit institution."
"I wish that events like these would completely shrink the scope of how many musicians they book and pay each of those people respectfully," she said.
Valee says no one's forced to take part in the event, and that it creates accessible networking spaces that otherwise wouldn't exist.
"We're creating an opportunity and [from] the response that comes, people want to be here," he said.
But it isn't just emerging artists that face financial barriers. Established acts like Cadence Weapon and Animal Collective have spoken out about the financial difficulty of touring post pandemic.
Doran says selling merchandise is an effective way to provide an artist some financial support.
"Whether it's a vinyl record … or whether it's enamel pins, or hats or T-shirt designs, merch is almost without a doubt one of the strongest and only ways I make money," she said.
Making their debut
Toronto-based singer Nicolina Bozzo and Montreal-based singer Reine Badejoko were two of the five finalists in CMW's Jim Beam National Talent Search this year, which covers an artist's travel expenses.
Bozzo, who releases music under her first name, was one of the final five contestants on American Idol last year. CMW was her first festival experience.
"This morning I woke up to a bunch of followers on Instagram and just so much love from last night," she said the day after her showcase.
Badejoko, whose artist name is Reini B, is also going home happy.
"I'm leaving here with a bigger network, which is more than I could ask for," she said.
Away from the headline competitions, there are also late-night showcases in venues across Toronto. Doran says they can be the type of experience that indie musicians bond over — and joke about — later on.
"I feel like almost every Canadian DIY band has a story about playing Rancho Relaxo at 3 a.m. for CMW showcase that like three people went to and the bartender was surly," she said.
Bentham encourages young musicians facing the grind to not give up.
"I was never frustrated early on with our lack of fees because I understood that like well, we're not bringing anybody out and we're here to try and grow the band," he said.
"Once the metrics started shifting in our favour and we were conscious that we could play this venue just ourselves and we don't need the festival to do this, that's when the offers that they were giving us were substantial and reflected our value."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
With files from Laura Thompson