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The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Behind 4479 Toronto

The 4479 Toronto program was set up to help the city become a music destination like Austin, Texas. But lofty goals don't come easy.

Toronto has been getting compared to Austin, Texas a lot lately and for one reason in particular: the 4479 Toronto initiative that's aiming to grow Toronto's music economy is modelling itself after the home of SXSW. You might've heard about 4479 Toronto before — it was announced last NXNE and has been in the news more recently for its efforts in instating a Music Office and Music Advisory Board. But do you know what it is, who started it and who benefits from it? With SXSW still in our minds, now's a perfect time to take a look at the good, the bad and the ugly of 4479 Toronto.

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The Good: 4479 Toronto's main goal is to bolster the success of Toronto's music industry by branding the city as a top live music destination. This idea is based on a report by Titan Music Group, commissioned by Music Canada, that compared the musical economies of Toronto and Austin. The report recommended that Toronto leverage the success of its music industry to help tourism-- making our city a music tourism destination would ideally work in the favour of both industries

If successful, 4479 Toronto could create immense opportunities for local musicians to promote their music both here and abroad. Central to the idea of 4479 Toronto is the value they place on what they consider to be the economic hub of our music economy: music venues and recording studios. 4479 continuously states the importance of both and it seems to be a number one priority for the newly-instated Toronto Music Advisory Board. Sitting on the board are key stakeholders in these areas. It's too early to tell, but the Music Advisory Board could help local venues and small businesses be recognized as central to the music industry and therefore make them more of a priority in the eyes of the city and local government. We may no longer have to worry about the future of key performance spaces like the El Mo, the Silver Dollar or the Masonic Lodge if they are viewed as being the vital to the economy. Maybe then the permitting process would be more transparent for business owners, which is a change we desperately need.

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Councillor Josh Colle has been Music Canada's ally in this fight since the Titan Music Group report was first published two years ago. At first glance, Colle seems a questionable fit for champion of the city's music industry — Eglinton/Lawrence has no music venues of its own and is far removed from where most of the action occurs downtown. But during Wavelength's recent “Toronto Music Moment” panel discussion, he surprised many with his knowledge of his riding's history with respect to the city's reggae and hip hop communities, and even further still by noting and lamenting the disappearance of businesses central to those cultures from the area. Colle seems very in tune with the city's musical culture, and so the passion with which he's been pushing music issues here has him poised to be the heart of this operation and a strong ally to the city's musicians.

The Bad:

The report that 4479 Toronto initiative is taking its recommendations from explicitly names the artistic community as an “obstacle” and explains that they will see little-to-no benefit from the apparatuses that 4479 Toronto are pushing to form. The report distinguishes between the arts and commercial industry arbitrarily, and never goes into detail about where one ends and the other begins. This viewpoint is especially a concern given the fact that it's likely that music from our arts community will be used to promote our city abroad.

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In an interview with Noisey Canada, Josh Zucker, guitarist of Fucked Up and co-organizer of the immensely successful Long Winter concert series, pointed out that the distancing between 4479 Toronto’s priorities and the arts community goes even further as evidenced by their emphasis of the importance of industry mechanisms (bars, venues, record studios and labels) over the artists themselves. Zucker sees it as a strange choice on the part of 4479 Toronto, especially when the pay divide between musicians and people within the industry’s infrastructure is so great.

“I always found it interesting that a small but significant number of people could make a full-time living by working to provide the infrastructure of music, but virtually no one could make a living actually making the music itself. It'd be interesting to know how many people in Toronto make a living by being part of the infrastructure of music compared to how many make a living making music.”

Even more worrisome is that the main proponent behind the cause from day one has been Music Canada, a lobbyist group that acts on behalf of the major record labels in the country, who have proven themselves to be extremely out of touch with Canadians on a regular basis. In addition to their work here in Toronto, Music Canada have been busy waging war against net neutrality, asking the government to force ISPs to block websites thought to be centres for illegal downloading, and even have gone so far as to accuse Google of being instrumental in internet piracy. They say they’re doing this because musicians are seeing smaller and smaller due to music piracy, despite Canadian music sales have seen an increase digitally last year.

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At the aforementioned Wavelength panel discussion, Colle argued that the “glacial pace” that City Hall/council move at is the main reason why the music industry needs a direct line to council (via the Music Advisory Board) so that the city can serve its citizens better by not having to go through so much red tape. In the same conversation, Colle deflected that the reason why the members appointed to the Music Advisory Board were mostly white and male was because the process was rushed. So apparently City Hall moves at both a glacial and rushed pace, depending on what's most convenient.

The Ugly:

Ironically, the brand name attached to a project meant to define Toronto actually points to Whitby. 4479 Toronto gets its name from the latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates for the city, which is the branding equivalent of saying “kinda, sorta Toronto.”

If successful 4479 Toronto will have a lasting effect on how our city defines itself via its music, but we should be careful that the definition fits and isn't only “kinda, sorta” us. According to the promo video 4479 Toronto screened during their launch, most of Toronto’s musical acts are white dudes with beards. How will 4479 Toronto work to ensure that the vibrant Caribbean, Latin and other diasporic communities are included in this definition?

The aforementioned lack of diversity on the Music Advisory Board is also a concern, one that was voiced by panelists Nadine Mcnulty and Dalton Higgins during the Wavelength panel discussion. Higgins, a promoter, performer and journalist expressed some doubt following the panel over how qualified the current board members were if they didn’t represent the city: “I do know that there were some music community members who said they were horrified at the representation (or lack thereof) on the Board of women, Afro-diasporic music representatives (like myself), and that there were a number of people of colour on there who don't really represent what's actually going on, as far as contemporary music realities, especially on the ground.” Instead, he put forward the notion that the Music Advisory Board should represent its citizens and be based on a meritocracy, ideally involving those who have the greatest stakes in our music industry, not just those with the loudest voices.

If 4479 Toronto’s attempt at branding itself so far are an indication for what’s to come as they try to show the world that we’re the new “live music capitol of the world” then we can expect an image that looks or sounds nothing like the Toronto that we all know.

Photos courtesy of 4479 Toronto

Michael Rancic is a freelance writer living in Toronto, he is on Twitter