Fifteen-year-old, Priyana, launches her first original EP, Out of Place, to share her vision for children and teens to feel heard, validated, and understood through her music. Her mission is to make sure kids have a safe place to seek the support they need through Kids Help Phone by providing a digital download of her EP when anyone donates to her fundraiser.

Just after turning 13, Priyana started regularly hearing stories about kids hurting themselves and committing suicide. Saddened and very concerned, she needed to express her feelings and figure out how she could help. Within a few days she wrote her first song and continues to regularly write songs focusing on mental health. To date she has written over 20 songs.

Priyana wants to write music that helps kids feel understood and know they’re not alone. She also wants to make sure they have access to the help they need. So, she decided to create a fundraising EP to support youth mental health through Kids Help Phone, which provides free professional counselling online or by phone for young people.

How do you describe this new offering from Izael Nzas? From harpsichord-like tone to the simplest music notes to vibe in a delightfully unique experience. Some interesting percussion and piano choices. Ambling rhythms, plucky string and keyboard taps meld into one big conglomerate of sound.

Izael is such an eclectic artist rangng from Afro, Latin, Classic and Jazz all fused together to great his sound. A World of Music – Un mundo de musica!

“In this project, I overpassed my expectation I started without even knowing that a few months later I was going to discover I am a composer. I started with the instrumental “Inner Peace” and when I finished I said, you should spend some quality time trying to understand this music composition thing.”

I recently saw a post in a web forum from a manager that was asking for connections to a couple of big publications. His artist had been added to two bigger “editorial” playlists on Spotify and was doing some 100,000 streams.

He was certain that these playlists would get him interest from bigger publications but none of them replied to his emails. And several comments were just that being on playlists you need over 20 million streams on Spotify before things happen.

I did a panel this Spring with the top four bloggers and big publications on a Showcase Festival. One of the quotes was “If you start your mail to us by describing how many Spotify streams you have, that is a good reason right way for us to throw it in the trash.”

Myer Clarity, 27, is a Toronto based multi-genre producer, songwriter and hip hop artist with 3 self-produced albums under his belt. His unique blend of hip hop, punk and jazz combined with his honest story-telling has gained him a dedicated fan base both at home and overseas. 

Born and raised in Montreal to a French-Canadian mother and a Jewish father, Myer expressed an interest in music early, at age 11. His neighbour Sagi, a member of local rap group NL5, brought Myer to his first recording studio at age 12, where he learned about audio production first hand. 

At 13, he studied piano and music theory under jazz legend Ernie Nelson. Sadly, Ernie passed away shortly after from natural causes, prompting Myer to compose a heartfelt piece to his teacher which he performed in honour of him at Concordia’s Music Hall. He went on to study jazz theory and piano for 4 more years with one of Ernie’s students.

Todd Taylor is an American five string banjo player. He held the Guinness Book of World Records title for "world's fastest banjo".

He has played and toured with other notable bluegrass players including Bill Monroe, Carl Story, Jim & Jesse. Taylor became the first banjo player to take the Banjo to the Rock-n-Roll worldwide Top-40 countdown, with his remake of the classic rock tune "Free Bird". Taylor is a four-time Grammy Award nominee.

It’s a dream come true for the six-time Grammy Award nominee, who first became interested in playing the banjo when he was 6 years old. He travels to Nashville on Monday to get ready for his performance at the iconic venue where many country legends have played.

Some species of butterfly spend their entire existences in migration, journeying to the ends of the Earth on nothing more than sheer determination and undeniable instinct. 

Sean Murray can identify. The veteran Ontario musician has also devoted a vast portion of his life to the all-consuming pursuit of a distant, seemingly unreachable goal: The completion of his magnum opus Butterfly Tongue Revisited, a long-gestating labour of love whose arrival also heralds the birth of his new alternative indie-rock project Reay (pronounced Ray, after his grandmother's maiden name). 

You always get that the artist is the genius around the whole song.  Still, in most cases, they would have been nothing if it wasn't for that perfect PR team. It’s like saying that the success in Formula 1 is the driver. Actually, in Formula 1 they enter as a team.

I hear it all the time; artists coming up to me saying they have done the best song ever and it's produced by some dude you have never heard of in your life. Okay, it could be a really good song. But I know so many good songs, even brilliant songs that never reach a big audience. Many of the best albums I know never get anywhere. To build that perfect storm that a good song needs to become a classical song, that is up to your PR team and a bit of luck. What I can definitely say is that a perfect song cannot be a hit just by being perfect. As little as the driver in Formula 1 being the whole team - it’s impossible.

True North Records announces a September 20 world-wide release date for Crowing Ignites, the new all-instrumental CD from legendary Canadian singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn. Cockburn also announced his North American tour (dates below) with more shows to be confirmed.

Crowing Ignites was produced, recorded and mixed by Colin Linden, and recorded at the Firehouse in San Francisco. It showcases 11 all-original compositions by Cockburn, who plays acoustic guitar throughout, backed by a stellar cast of sympathetic musicians. Cockburn will support the new disc’s release with a summer/fall tour schedule throughout the United States and Canada.  

In 2005, Bruce Cockburn released Speechless, a collection of instrumental tracks that shone the spotlight on the singer-songwriter’s exceptional acoustic guitar playing. The album earned Cockburn a Canadian Folk Music Award for Best Instrumentalist and underscored his stature as one of the world’s premier pickers. 

Malian musical duo and Grammy Award nominees Amadou & Mariam are teaming up with five-time Grammy Award-winning gospel group Blind Boys of Alabama for the new singles, “Bamako To Birmingham” and “Two Cultures, One Beat,” out today via Because Music. Listen to/share both tracks at https://tinyurl.com/yxs3aho7.

The cross-genre collaboration came about after conversations between the groups on opposite sides of the Atlantic. The Blind Boys kicked off the recording process by laying down two tracks in the U.S. featuring their distinctive vocals, with Amadou & Mariam adding their contributions from the studio in Mali.

The two groups are currently on a joint tour together in Europe, with upcoming performances set for Cork, Ireland; Cambridge, England; Edinburgh, Scotland; and Västra Götalands län, Sweden. See below for a list of tour dates.

West Coast Soul/R&B artist Katherine Penfold is set to release her Justin Time/Nettwerk Records album debut with the Neo-Soul tinged "Sweetest Thing" featuring her take on Roberta Flack's timeless "Feel Like Makin' Love", a blissed-out collaboration with Moonchild's Amber Navran ("Far & Away"), and "Better" co-written and mixed by Grammy award-winning producer Chin Injeti (Drake, Eminem).

Soul resides just beneath the exterior. Upon meeting Katherine Penfold, you might initially notice the prominent tattoos along her shoulder and arms before the conversation veers to her lifelong affinity for motorcycles, skateboarding, or woodworking - let alone music. Listening to her sound elicits a different impression altogether - as a  sultry, smooth, and sweet delivery belies the rustic badassery she exudes with ease. This gorgeous contrast illuminates the artist’s 2019 full-length debut, Sweetest Thing, available October 4th (via Justin Time/Nettwerk).

Recently I attended a festival where I met a friend who is doing management in the same style as me. I have helped him in some cases with a specific artist so of course, I asked how it was going around that?

“I dropped that artist he explained. I was busting my ass off to get them opportunities and get things going. Still, it felt like they very just in for the ride, and when we got eight on the chart and they didn't even post something around it on social media I just dropped them.”

This is very common. In most cases when I start talking to managers I have known for a while I ask if they are still working with that specific artist.  In many cases, they just grew tired of all the work they did for them and then they are treated like shit.

A few weeks ago, Spotify announced that they are deleting the program where artists could upload themselves straight to Spotify. No explanation was given or how they would deal with their partnership with Distrokid.

This was just the most stupid thing from the beginning, so no surprise that it was closed before it even survived a year. I guess they wanted to be able to pick out some good artist straight from a new artist that would upload. The reality is that most artists who have something going is already going through a label, most labels wouldn't use a distribution that is open for everyone since they always have the worst percentage and the worst service.

Grammy-nominated country, rock and roll singer/songwriter, Hayes Carll, will be strumming his way onto Canadian soil this August and September, playing seven shows across our Western provinces. The tour kicks off at Vancouver’s Biltmore Cabaret, on August 31 with following shows in Nelson, Calgary, Lethbridge, Edmonton and Winnipeg. Full tour details are listed below and tickets can be purchased here.

Hailing from Houston, TX Carll’s year started off with a bang when he released his sixth highly anticipated album, What It Is, mid-February. Featuring the hit single, Times Like These, What It Is, has received praise from many media outlets including Rolling Stone, Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, NPR Music, MOJO, American Songwriter and No Depression. Carll has recently performed on multiple television programs like The Tonight Show, Austin City Limits and Later with Jools Holland and has had his songs recorded by artists including Lee Ann Womack, Kenny Chesney, Kelly Willis and Hard Working Americans.

It's incredible how many artists don't have their act together. I was compiling media on artists for our festival and we use a site that you can upload your pictures, bio, and links. Okay, I can understand that you feel that it is too much to upload every other site now and then, but you really need a homepage that has specific elements.

We have all had the boss that no one really likes, that comes into your room and scream at you. Whatever you do it's not good enough. Yes, we all have had that boss.

Revealing, many artists are that boss. If you are an artist you are the boss, sure it doesn't feel that way when you sit in the record label room or in other situations. Still, it's your music that is being promoted and the people that work on the promotion team are in fact, your employees.

Sure, you can look at it like you are a customer. Same here, we all have worked in a job when they had customers that are just ugly, ignorant and you just want to tell them to shut up, but since this is a business you can't just do that. We all had that job!

And yes, many artists are that boss or that customer. In my daily life as a manager, my job is to get the artist away from the decision makers to keep them from looking like the bad person. Most of the time, because they are acting just like the person we all hate. The risk is that they accidentally do that to someone really important.

It’s a blue-skied and sunny day and pouring out of the speakers is the most melancholic UK voice since Bert Jansch. It belongs to Kete Bowers, a Liverpudlian singer-songwriter and it’s rolling out the tunes of the current album, Paper Ships. It has a Canuck connection, produced by and featuring Michael Timmins alongside his Cowboy Junkies drummer brother Peter and released on the Current Records. The material is very much about loss, depression, fear and despair on both a community and individual level, delivered in tones reminiscent of Leonard Cohen and Townes Van Zandt.

If you are not only a fan of gambling but cannot live without music, you should simply try all these online slots at www.baocasino.com/en-CA/games/slots. They are devoted to various singers, musical groups, melodies.

They can let you feel being at a live concert and take pleasure of the sound. Here is the top-5 of slot machines that will let you dive into the musical life.

5. SAMBA BRAZIL
Rio de Janeiro, the capital of passion and carnivals, the city where the hottest dancers live and the most beautiful girls show their perfect bodies, attracts millions of tourists. This slot attracts gambles as well: its Latin music, Brazilian professional dancers and charming girls are amazing!

The symbol of a jolly Latin dancer is also surprising. This guy can be “separated” – it brings a gambler an award. This is called Mix Pay and lets the player win more.