The Canadian digital first creator economy isn’t something that politicians or policy makers seem to know much about, but they are quick to propose legislative reforms that directly implicate it, most recently in the form of Bill C-10. Yet the sector is thriving, with Canadian stars earning millions of dollars and attracting global audiences that often exceed Canada’s conventional film and television sector.
Scott Benzie, the CEO of Buffer Festival, started in traditional media but now advocates and works with creators, platforms and industry around online content. He joins the Law Bytes podcast to discuss the current state of digital first creators in Canada, their omission from the Bill C-10 process, and the formation of Digital First Canada, a new advocacy group to better represent the needs of the community.
The podcast can be downloaded here, accessed on YouTube, and is embedded below. Subscribe to the podcast via Apple Podcast, Google Play, Spotify or the RSS feed. Updates on the podcast on Twitter at @Lawbytespod.
Credits:
gee that website needs a proper webmaster its gonna scare peopel away they dont have uptodate security
film industry dont need em no mor ei for last 3 years got enough freebies from epic games to do my own content regardless of all these people and yup ill kepe making it just not share it and when i pass on someone will go and c-10 stopped this?
Benzie keeps referring to the music industry when he clearly doesn’t know what he’s talking about. His examples of digital-first success (Justin Bieber, Alessia Cara, and Shawn Mendes) are ALL signed to Universal Music, literally the largest multinational music company in the world — it doesn’t get much more established and old-world media than that. He points to these artists as examples of “export success” when their content is, in fact, being exported from the Universal mothership in the United States back to Canada, not the other way around.
Then in the context of making an album once a year, Benzie says “you have to be incorporated to be able to be certified as CanCon” and that “you have to get every piece of content certified.” This is categorically false. Individuals, partnerships and corporations all have equal status in this regard. While the CRTC will “certify” recordings on request, the vast majority of commercially released recordings are never formally certified to qualify as CanCon — because it’s obvious to everyone (yes, even commercial radio programmers) and they simply don’t need to be.
Finally, Benzie suggests that people join the “Musicians’ Guild” (a non-existent group) because “becoming a member is advantageous to you accessing Canadian cultural funds”. WTF? Nobody needs to belong to a labour union to access the Canada Music Fund, you just make an application at FACTOR or MusicAction (as plenty of Canadian artists do, even to make videos for YouTube).
The government has no idea anything besides softwood and oil even can be Canadian produced. This isn’t an omission, it’s willful ignorance due to behind the scened benefactors.
You are right, this needs to be resolved at the legislative level so that this sector can be developed. I read in the article https://engre.co/blogs/articles/how-to-keep-up-with-technology-trends/ that this is now a very important point that slows down some technological innovations