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Comment by mynegation | Hacker News Reader

As a Canadian, I am of two minds about it. FM radio is required to broadcast Canadian produced or performed music at least for 35% of the time. There are not too many, in absolute numbers, songs that are both Canadian and popular which results in few songs being broadcast to death. At least that was the case when I used to listen to FM radio. On the other hand, that legislation certainly helped Canadian artists.

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One subtle distinction: it has helped Canadian artists that are producing "Canadian Content" [1], not all Canadian artists. If you are a Canadian singer in a band with a song that was composed by your American band mate, you are SOL. The main criticism of this bill is that with richer media content, this line becomes increasingly ambiguous (e.g. see the rules for television [2]). It seems likely that the outcome will be a lot more power for Canadian media giants (via industry groups and trade organizations) and smaller Canadian creators will be worse off, with forced algorithmic priority given to "certified" content.

[1] https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/info_sht/r1.htm

[2] https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/cancon/c_cdn.htm

> FM radio is required to broadcast Canadian produced or performed music at least for 35% of the time

Let's see... popular music on FM radio in the US: The Weeknd, Drake, Justin Bieber... Shawn Mendes....

Yeah, 35% sounds about right.

Radio in YYZ:

Sam Roberts, Celine Dione, Nickleback, Avril Levine. Sounds disturbed.

"I think this is a jam", "...this is an amazing song." -Lizzo, on Nickelback's How You Remind Me

Though I can't remember the last time I heard Gordon Lightfoot on US radio. Which is a shame - he is an astonishing songwriter.

And 100% garbage!

(Not because it's Canadian, because it's on radio)

I make no apologies for being a fan of The Weeknd. And Carly Rae Jepsen.

And I make no apologies for having never heard of either of them! Just not interested in music that's made from the ground up just to stick in people heads for a few days, personally. The art is gone, they follow a pretty basic formula. And they usually don't even write their own music except for the lyrics. And if you're lucky you might even get to hear their actual voice!

Might as well just listen to generative music at that point. At least that will have interesting moments in it when it enters the uncanny valley.

Well they are from Canada, and may not be to your taste, but I imagine you haven't seen them perform live - they're actually really good. ;-)

Regarding autotune, it's worth noting that one of the most famous users of autotune as a musical effect, T-Pain (who isn't Canadian) is actually an excellent singer (and for something unexpected, check out his cover of Black Sabbath's War Pigs.)

Of course The Weeknd is in fact a successful songwriter, but I don't entirely understand the criticism of singers for not writing their own music. Certainly we accept that it's OK in jazz, in musicals, in movies, and at the opera - why not popular music?

Meh, it doesn't really help Canadian artists, it helps the Canadian version of artists that want to produce something the government wants to support. Same as all business subsidies in Canada. We're just a pretend economy of government spending. Companies playing startup, people playing artist. None of it is viable or valuable outside the government spending bubble, and we'd all be better off if it just stopped. Except for the few ologopolists that want to keep their fiefdoms and ensure no real competition ever emerges.

What is the difference between Canadian artists and the Canadian version of artists? Isn't the latter definitionally a subset of the former?

This comment just seems like a rant against governments and laws.

Look forward to seeing the same thing on YouTube, Twitter and other online services from now on in Canada. At least 30% of the videos your feed contain will be from some Canadian "influencers" that the government approved. Regulation will continue being created to force content upon you until you start liking the content.

Government-approved, advertiser-approved - what's the diff? It's all garbage when it's being forced on you.

Did you read the article ? It specifically says user generated content is NOT covered.

Did you? :) It specifically says that addition was proposed but then denied so it's still unclear.

My understanding is everyone involved tried to clarify that it’s not covered. Not sure why the addition isn’t there

It feels to me like if the goal was to help Canadian artists who are "drowned out" by US media, it would suffice to launch a government-run non-profit streaming platform exclusively for Canadian content - then all people looking for it would know exactly where to go, and artists would get all the money that those people are willing to give.

And if that scheme is not sufficient, then we're talking about forcing people into consuming content that they wouldn't otherwise.

I think that's going to be the key here, how do you define "Canadian content" in terms of internet broadcast. Does this mean the government will be hand picking which content and producers count as Canadian? If standards are set, will they favor certain content producers with ties to the government. Right now the law is extremely vague and seems like it's tilted towards helping Canada's legacy media rather than small Canadian creators like Canadian youtube producers.

Ir would be indefensible for the government to pick people. It didn’t do that before on TV so why would it do that now ?

Quota laws are not that rare outside of the US. They were used in France to rebuild the National cinema.

There is no trend for the government to do what you’ve described, and they do is they create a positive loop between the distributors and content creators so more local content is produced and shown.

>> FM radio is required to broadcast

So, how does this work on Spotify? Am I now required to listen to Nickelback?

As if you were able to avoid Nickelback before.

It is plausible that the requirement would be something like 'insert at least 35% Canadian tracks' to any pre-canned playlist or 'song radio' sequence. I wonder how that would work with Gothenburg death metal playlists. I will probably get some Nickelback there.

Depends on how the US Supreme Court rules on “the algorithm”

So call me, maybe!!

"Now, now, the Canadian government has apologized for Bryan Adams on several occasions..."

When I went to visit my parents for Easter I was shocked to hear Sam Roberts' Milky Way song. That was shocking.

And it brings no value in the end when English is spoken in many places outside of Canada

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