On Thursday, September 29, 2016, CIMA held its Annual General Meeting at the impressive Entertainment One office space in downtown Toronto.
The meeting focused on comments by Stuart Johnston (CIMA President), Shauna de Cartier (CIMA Chair and President, Six Shooter Records), and Brian Hetherman (Interim Manager of MusicOntario). They described CIMA’s recent and future trade association activities, as well as those of our provincial affiliate, MusicOntario.
The Meeting was an occasion to sum up the recent advocacy, music export and industry awards projects CIMA is undertaking on behalf of Canada’s English-language independent music community.
None of these projects would be possible, meanwhile, without the crucial investment of our sponsors: the Government of Canada; the Government of Ontario and the Ontario Media Development Corporation (OMDC); the Radio Starker Fund; the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN); Canadian Music Week; Harvard Broadcasting; FACTOR; Corus Radio; Stingray Music; JazzFM; ACTRA and the Recording Artists’ Collecting Society (RACS) and the Musicians’ Rights Organization Canada (MROC).
Bell Media’s President of Broadcasting and Content, Randy Lennox, was also featured as a special guest speaker. Randy used the opportunity to talk about the potential he thinks digital streaming will create for Bell to cooperate with Canada’s independent artists and music companies. Subsequently, he fielded questions about how this cooperation might take place, despite the lack of CRTC regulations that would apply to services like iHeartRadio’s music streaming app.
In business matters, a new board of directors was elected to helm CIMA through 2016-2017. CIMA’s 18-person board is now as follows. Members in bold are those who were specifically elected during last week’s AGM:
- Chris Moncada (Last Gang Entertainment)
- Gord Dimitrieff (Aporia Records)
- Jake Gold (The Management Trust)
- Justin West (Secret City Records)
- Kieran Roy (Arts & Crafts Productions)
- Lisa Logutenkow (Dine Alone Music)
- Mathieu Drouin (Crystal Math Music Group)
- Mike Denney (MDM Recordings Inc.)
- Nick Blasko (Amelia Artists Inc./Atomique Productions Ltd.)
- Pegi Cecconi (Anthem Entertainment Group)
- Peter Cardinali (Peter Cardinali Productions/Alma Records)
- Ric Arboit (Nettwerk Productions)
- Rob Lanni (Coalition Music)
- Ron Kitchener (RGK Entertainment Group)
- Sandy Pandya (Pandyamonium Artist Management)
- Shauna de Cartier (Six Shooter Records)
- Tim Potocic (Sonic Unyon Records)
- Tony Tarleton (Cadence Music Group)
Many thanks go out to all our members who participated in the election process as nominees this year!
Last Thursday’s AGM kicked off with a rousing performance from Johnson Crook, followed later on by an atmospheric closing set from Common Deer. Both bands gave fitting demonstrations of the unique styles of music our industry is known for inspiring and celebrating.
As President Stuart Johnston emphasized when he spoke to a packed room of CIMA’s members, affiliates, partners, friends, sponsors and colleagues, “the year ahead will be a pivotal one for our industry.” With so much valuable support behind us, we hope to make it a highly successful one, too.
