Canadian Music Week Panels

Not only was Toronto the hub for non-stop concerts of every genre at every venue the city offers from artists all over the world as part of Canadian Music Week, but it was also a learning headquarters for artists and industry professionals interested in evolving their craft.
Musicians, managers, publicists and people with any title imaginable associated with the music industry attended panels at the Toronto Marriott Downtown Eaton Centre Hotel from Thursday through until Sunday on almost every topic imaginable.
Booths were set up throughout the lobby from Monster Energy, Trebas Institute and radio stations such as 96.9 Jack FM, providing great networking opportunities for those in attendance between learning sessions.
From early Thursday morning, artists herded themselves into various ballrooms after checking out the array of booths, hungry to learn more about the market and how to propel their careers.
One of the festival’s first panels was, “Making Money For Artists: DIY Social Online Tools” featuring industry professionals such as Lou Plaia from ReverbNation, Matt Mason from Bittorrent, David Dufresne from Bandzoogle and others who shared their insight with the packed ballroom on the importance of web branding, live streaming and most importantly, owning an updated website. “The biggest mistake [an artist can make on their website] is not having one, the second biggest mistake is having one and not keeping it updated. A website is a living thing,” Bandzoogle’s David Dufresne explained.
Later on in the day, after an afternoon of networking and one-on-one mentor interviews with some of the panelists, the motivated CMW attendees crowded into the Trinity room for the “Topspin + MTV: How Artists Can Work With Big Media To Grow Fanbase” where Topspin’s Bob Moczydlowsky and MTV’s Jose Cuello explained a new medium provided by a partnership of the two companies for artists to fill out a page on the MTV website in order to promote their music on a high traffic site.
“It’s never really happened before where you have this enormous media partner that is connected to millennials the way that MTV is, allowing you to do this with our traffic. It’s mutually beneficial but it’s a missed opportunity if people don’t come here and build up their pages,” Cuello explained.
After soaking in the information from the hour long panels, each which included a Q&A period, the artists left buzzing with inspiring conversation about what they had learnt and how they were about to apply that new-found knowledge to their careers.