{"id":70483,"date":"2016-02-11T22:07:59","date_gmt":"2016-02-12T03:07:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=70483"},"modified":"2016-02-11T22:07:59","modified_gmt":"2016-02-12T03:07:59","slug":"michael-buble-says-new-b-c-music-fund-will-help-musicians-kickstart-careers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2016\/02\/11\/michael-buble-says-new-b-c-music-fund-will-help-musicians-kickstart-careers\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Buble says new B.C. Music Fund will help musicians kickstart careers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Michael<\/a>
Michael Buble (Photo by Eva Rinaldi<\/a>\/Flickr)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

VANCOUVER \u2013 Michael Buble says British Columbia has the potential to become the \u201cNashville of Canada,\u201d and a new $15-million government grant will help foster a thriving local music industry.<\/p>\n

The Metro Vancouver-born crooner joined Premier Christy Clark on Thursday to announce the B.C. Music Fund, which aims to help emerging and well-known artists with production, distribution and promotion.<\/p>\n

\u201cTruly, it\u2019s never been tougher to develop a career as an artist,\u201d Buble said. \u201cThanks to you, premier, people who want to pursue a music career here will be able to do so and not have to leave home, which is pretty incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n

The announcement was part of the launch of a new Music Canada report, \u201cB.C.\u2019s Music Sector: From Adversity to Opportunity,\u201d which argues the province is filled with talent but its music industry is in serious decline.<\/p>\n

The report makes 26 recommendations, including appointing a municipal music officer to serve as a liaison with industry and advocate for music tourism, land use planning that takes into account the need for new music venues and removing liquor-licensing red tape.<\/p>\n

Buble said Nashville, Tenn., brings in billions in music revenue and the onus is partly on established artists like himself to promote B.C.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be honest with you, they don\u2019t know yet. They haven\u2019t met us yet,\u201d he joked, referencing one of his hits and drawing laughs and groans from the crowd.<\/p>\n

The event was attended by B.C.-based music stars including Nickelback lead singer Chad Kroeger, well-known talent manager Bruce Allen and rocker Matthew Good.<\/p>\n

Clark recalled her own fond musical memories, including going to see punk rockers D.O.A. at her first concert and watching Buble sing at a mosque when he was 16.<\/p>\n

She said the $15-million grant from the province will support the creation of the fund, which will be managed by Creative B.C. and include money for music education, live venues and touring.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we can become the L.A. of the world for film, why can\u2019t we become the Nashville of the world for music?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n

Clark said the fund could grow or change in the coming years, depending on how well it works. In contrast, the Ontario Music Fund was established in 2013 as a three-year, $45-million grant program and was later made permanent.<\/p>\n

Juno Award-winning indie artist Dan Mangan asked Clark how the money will be disseminated to emerging artists, to which the premier responded that Creative B.C. would offer more application details soon.<\/p>\n

Mangan said after the event that he would like to see a substantial amount of the money go towards touring and recording.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have no program in place yet to help people record albums in this province, which is crazy. Every province in the country has it and we don\u2019t. We\u2019ve been a bit of a laughingstock,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet alone the housing cost, B.C. has been a very hard place to live and be a musician and make a living in the last number of years. (The fund is) good. I just want to see it spread out across a number of platforms.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

VANCOUVER \u2013 Michael Buble says British Columbia has the potential to become the \u201cNashville of Canada,\u201d and a new $15-million …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":70484,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,106],"tags":[9636],"class_list":["post-70483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","category-hollywood","tag-cp","mauthors-laura-kane","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70483\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}