NxEW.ca Turns None and a Half

I have long thought that Canadian music was under-appreciated in Canada. Whatever the wonderful readers of this blog may think 80-90% of Canada has never heard of any of Broken Social Scene, the Arcade Fire, the New Pornographers, Joel Plaskett or the Weakerthans (much less anyone else). Feist is doing a little better but only after a few Grammy nominations. Meanwhile the world is increasingly recognizing Canada as a unending garden of musical talent. Canada currently sells one album abroad for every one we import and in terms of overall dollars our music business come second only to the United States in the English speaking world. Record labels from the U.S. and the U.K. are signing Canadian acts right and left and Gene Simmons (of KISS) is currently trying to start a new record label comprised entirely of Canadian artists.

I made various efforts to make this point but, while things have certainly improved, I still didn't feel that it was good enough. With the wealth of musical talent in this country it should be all over the airwaves, Canadian radio stations should be struggling to find space for international artists and even Canadian television should be showing regular concerts, videos and interviews. A night should never go by that there aren't Canadian musical guests on shows like the Hour.

Even the Canadian Music media isn't quite good enough. Much of it is still obsessed with artists from outside of Canada and most of it is concentrated in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver - all great cities to be sure, but far from being the whole story.

A little over 6 months ago, during the Canadian Music Fest, I decided it was time to stop trying to convince the existing media and do something. I remember Canadian Music Fest / Canadian Music Week in particular because it was this year that I finally figured out that Canadian Music Week actually makes Toronto less Canadian than it usually is when it comes to music.

So, I asked myself what I could do instead of criticizing the media and the answer was NxEW.ca - which is exactly six months old today. The idea is simple - to create a group blog that is open to Canadian music lovers from everywhere. If people from all over the country will share their thoughts on bands they like, music they like, shows they've seen etc., and enough people do it we will have a good overview of the Canadian music scene - all of it. As opposed to being concentrated in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver NxEW.ca currently has 135 contributors in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Halifax, Calgary, Edmonton, Victoria, Winnipeg, Sackville, St. John's, Guelph, London, Windsor, Peterborough, Banff, Lethbridge, Charlottetown, Regina, Saskatoon and a few dozen other Canadian cities plus people in New York, Boston and Los Angeles watching for Canadian bands on tour.

We have, in our first six months, served up nearly 1,200 blog posts on hundreds of Canadian artists and albums and have had 63,000 unique visitors to the site. We have 2,032 people following us on Twitter (that's just 22 people shy of CBC Sports) and 1,573 friends (not fans) on Facebook and almost 500 people subscribe to the site via RSS or Email. All of this has been accomplished without spending any money. To date we've paid for web hosting and domain registration and that's it - we've spend no money on promotions or advertising.

There are bigger and better things in the works for the next six months. Please help us grow by telling a few friends and if you love music join us!