When you work in the music industry, you can easily spot the amateurs since it’s changing so much so quickly. If you haven’t been in the new world recently you are going to be exposed pretty fast. In my early days, I did several of these mistakes. The main error is that if you want to appear to be professional you need to tell it in a certain way.

I was managing my first band. I played myself in the band back in those days. We had rehearsed for half a year and had saved up money to get into the local studio for a weekend. When we thought we were ready to book the studio the drummer told me that we needed to line the instruments in the recording. What he meant was that we would record track by track, not all instruments at the same time as a live recording which was kind of standard back in these days to save time in the studio.

I have just gone through new singles for the radio station. It’s kind of strange to see how many people don’t really know what is important. Just for fun, I looked back on all the singles we added over the past six months. And these are singles from big PR agencies, Record Labels, and down to the smallest do-it-yourself artist. I checked a hundred songs. Out of that hundred, only eleven had the right metadata.

Yes, metadata is the most important thing you have when you give out music. When it comes to do-it-yourself self-artists I can understand it’s maybe not that easy, but for a PR firm or a record label, this is basic knowledge. The funny part is those eleven actually eight of them were from do-it-yourself -artists.

This problem is definitely not an amateur problem this is a big problem in the whole industry. I just want to help out so I will describe what the metadata I’m talking about and how you actually get it done.

Dancing around the kitchen, especially if it’s a crazy chicken dance, can be exactly what the doctor ordered after a hard day, or just for a much-needed break. And “All Around The Kitchen,” the instructive new single – available now – from award-winning Charlottetown, PEI-based family-folk artist Gordie “Crazylegs” MacKeeman, is all that and more!

Check it out on YouTube here:

A stress-shedding little ditty with toe-tapping fiddle and an infectious rhythm, “All Around The Kitchen” is fun for the whole family with prompts for the next dance move: “Put your hands on your hips/ Let your right foot slip.” This is then followed by the pretzel-like “Stop right still/ Put your hand on your head/ Your other hand on your toe.” Of course, with the song’s looping chorus of “Cockadoodle doodle doo,” full-on chicken improvisation is strongly encouraged, if not required.

Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame is pleased to announce one of the most successful songwriters of all-time David Foster as its newest 2022 Inductee.  The BC-born music veteran has written chart-topping international hits and culture-defining soundtracks for blockbuster films like The Bodyguard, Urban Cowboy, and St. Elmo’s Fire, as well as classic holiday albums for Michael Bublé, Josh Groban, and Celine Dion to name a few.

It’s kind of interesting today that we still don’t know how many accounts are fake on social media. How many songs that are really done by computers then after that are listened to by bot that are computers listening to computers.

It shows off pretty quickly on social media that the number is not really an indication of how good you are. I got an artist with over a million followers on Tiktok and almost a million on Instagram. The music was not even close to good, new, or anything that you would listen to. I wondered a little bit why so many were following this artist must be something other than the music for sure. And yes, it was the account was more about other things than music. The music was there but just like 10% of the feed.

JUNO Award-winning powerhouse singer-songwriter Crystal Shawanda is back with a new studio album, Midnight Blues, set for release this September 30th on True North Records. The latest fiery bluesy Americana collection features the first single “How Bad Do You Want It” highlighting her full-throttle raspy voice, unmatched in today’s musical landscape, and an authenticity for the genre dating back to her youth.

Watch the official video here:

“Growing up, all of my favorite music had these breadcrumbs that led me to the blues,” Crystal says. “I often quote Willie Dixon: ‘Blues is the roots and everything else is the fruits.’ Even today's pop music, there's all this influence that derives from the blues. I was just always really attracted to the rawness and the realness of the blues.”

A song that can be deemed a timeless classic is a member of an elite and limited club for very good reason. They’re the songs that can transcend all the trends, and connect with and captivate listeners across generations. Internationally acclaimed jazz artist Carol Welsman has picked up a very timeless classic, dusted it off, polished it up, and is starting it all over again for a new audience. “Pick Yourself Up”  - check it out on YouTube here:

“Children in Ukraine — and around the world — need to know that this generation stands behind the next” — Tom Jackson

Watch the Red Cross Ukraine Appeal video on YouTube here:

Actor, Singer & Red Cross Ambassador Tom Jackson Releases New Music Special & Fundraising Initiative in Support of Millions of Children Impacted by Conflict in Ukraine with the “Red Cross Ukraine Appeal” Featuring Calgary Philharmonic, Andrea Menard, Mac Shepherd, Christina Martin, Beverley Mahood & More.

We take in submissions for our radio station Cashboxradio from several places. We get a lot of submissions from PR companies and radio promoters. Professional people that know how to present a song. Then we also take in songs through different webpages like submit hub where you pay a little to get the station to hear your song but are also guaranteed to get some feedback on the song even if we don’t choose it.

The 15th anniversary of the OSHEAGA Music and Arts Festival presented by Bell in collaboration with Coors Light is set to be one of the biggest parties of the decade. Montreal's Parc Jean-Drapeau, one of the greatest festival sites in North America, will be host to a much-anticipated and unrivaled festival experience from July 29 to 31, 2022. In addition to headlining sets from Arcade Fire, Future, Dua Lipa, and more, music fans can expect a stellar lineup featuring massive star power and the best of the new music vanguard from around the globe, in a state-of-the-art setting overlooking the gorgeous Montreal skyline.

For over 2 years, fans have been waiting for a chance to let loose and enjoy their best festival life - and Osheaga's 15th anniversary is sure to deliver that dose of excitement!

To celebrate, Osheaga’s booking agent Nick Farkas developed a podcast talking about the history of the festival, and a LOT of insider information on what it takes to stick around for a decade-and-a-half:  open.spotify.com/episode/1Ywo6KSTbyPoAgrkVAuRFu

Celebrating Music in Durham Region, the 2022 OMAs Take Place September 29th

Public Voting is Open Now - theomas.ca/

Under wraps no more, the Oshawa Music Awards have announced this year’s nominees! 

Marking its fifth year celebrating music in Durham Region, the 2022 OMAs are set to take place Thursday, September 29th, and will honour artists across multiple categories — including Songwriter of the Year, Album of the Year, Emerging Artist or Band of the Year, Durham Song of the Year, and Music Teacher of the Year, to name a few. 

Launched in 2018, previous Oshawa Music Award recipients include Shawn Mendes, Crown Lands, Tania Joy, Three Mile Islanders, Zaftig, Skye Wallace, Hollowsage, and Mogens Galberg; returning OMA winners Lindsay Schoolcraft and Gal George Gjurin are also up for 2022 nods. 

“Our list of 2022 nominees demonstrates once again that Durham Region is front row to so many incredibly talented artists,” OMA Co-Director Julius Allan Rondilla says. “Our arts scene is home to some of the nation’s best.”

There’s nothing like getting together with friends you haven’t seen in forever, and Ottawa-based Americana artist Francine Honey bottles the excitement of a wild, all-out reconnecting of pals in her new single and video, “One Big Party”.

Check out “One Big Party” on YouTube here:

Rocking and rollicking with a driving rhythm and a singalong chorus, “One Big Party” is an ode to the reunions we’ve all been longing for during the pandemic — as well as reunions of every kind.

“I had my group of high school friends in mind when I wrote it,” Honey shares. “We reconnected at a high school reunion some years ago and have gotten together regularly since then. Our parties almost always involve being outside around a fire and howling at the moon by the end of the night!”

Travis VanderHorst is a country music artist that has the perfect vocal blend of traditional country music and today’s fresh sound. His voice will draw you in and leave you wanting more. Born in 1994 in Orlando, Florida, Travis spent much of his younger years in a small town of Bellevue, Ohio.

This is where Travis was introduced to the traditional country music sound of artists like Randy Travis, Alan Jackson, Travis Tritt and many others.

Check out All the Time on YouTube here:

The world has changed a great deal since 1992, when Don Breithaupt first collected an album’s worth of his irresistibly hooky and jazzy pop songs and formed Monkey House.  Since then, the talented and prolific Los Angeles-based singer, songwriter, composer, arranger and producer has stamped the band’s Kurt Vonnegut moniker on five albums of original material, including Headquarters (2012), Left (2016) and Friday (2019), the latter a blazing tour de force which topped the iTunes jazz chart and went to # 11 on the Billboard Contemporary Jazz Albums chart.

Check out “Muddy River Rising” here on YouTube:

I have previously written about the new technology that allows musicians to just sit home in front of a computer and create songs. To understand the best songs in the world, you must understand how they are done and that is far from doing everything yourself.

Today you can easily do a song a week (I bet some think they can do a song a day) get it online and send it out to all the corners of the world. A bit like just throwing it against the wall to see if it sticks.

I got into this fun conversation on Submithub the other day. I got a very mediocre song sent to me. It’s a party progressive rock with supposedly uplifting lyrics. For me, it sounded like Christian rock that you hear  in bad elevators in Texas. Just the intro of the song was like thirty-five seconds with just a guitar the whole time. I was already bored at ten seconds. Since I am required to send feedback on Submithub I wrote the following:

“The intro is a bit too long it takes almost 30 sec before something happens. The hook is not strong enough.”

 Since I’m nice enough to also let the artist respond, I got this response.