Ott 13 2008, 6:21

Today I was thinking about .Cancon. For those that don't know, it means Canadian Content, and in Canada it is a LAW that states 40% of music played on radio and television (I believe it's restricted to channels that are music based) must be Canadian in origin. Sure, Canadian music is great, but it's just silly and trite to require that all music in radio and television* make up 40% of the total. It's not fair to artists having exposure stolen from them AND it makes a joke out of Canadian music. Making a law about playing Canadian music might as well say the music is not good enough to be chosen on it's own or that it can't speak for itself.
I didn't plan on an extended rant, it's just something I think about from time to time, and I think it's what breeds nickelbackcore, cash grab bands that figure out that 40% is sales and figure out what comformities they can make to fit what is chosen for that bracket (mostly thoughtless tunes that can stick in someone's head long enough for them to buy an album).
Normally this would not warrant anything other than a "duh!", but I just looked at my top 10 and it's seventy(!!) per cent Canadian artists. Broken Social Scene, Arcade Fire, Stars, Metric, Final Fantasy, Feist and Tokyo Police Club. Granted, these artists don't make up even close to 70% of my current listening(except maybe BSS!), but at the time I was most into them it likely made up more than twice what Cancon requires me to be force fed. Another side of the coin is that I first discovered Metric and Arcade Fire on television. I also saw a Stars video before I began listening to them, but it didn't contribute to me becoming a fan at all. Maybe without Cancon I wouldn't have found these artists when I did. It's unthinkable that I would have never stumbled on the hyper-popular Arcade Fire or reached the myspace/14 year old girl staple Metric, but who knows how I would have reacted to them if I had reached them at a different point in my life.
Perhaps some good does come out of this quota, but can say I wouldn't have seen a video by a great American or English band in place of those two artists if it weren't for the requirement of them being played based simply on nationality. Maybe having Canadian music prominently displayed has influenced people to go out and start a band, maybe without it we would have less talent around than we do today. Now I think maybe if I had heard a different band I liked at the time I heard Metric or Arcade Fire, my music taste may have grown differently. Cancon can affect sales, fans, taste, reputation or even maybe inspiration. Think of how much more money stays in Canada as a result of this law. I still don't think any of those benefits are worth sacrificing part of our artistic integrity through a law dictating what it is worth showing and what people should have access to.
Just for fun, let's have a look at the percentage of my top 100 that is Canadian. I counted 33 artists, with bands with half or more Canadian members counting. Just under 40. Weird. Maybe I am just a slave to the Cancon stigma, despite very few of these artists picking up even moderate radio/television attention. That thought hardly comforts me when the number is so eerily close to 40 and the amount of time I invested in listening to these artists. Should I really even have to be considering that enjoyed them, in a way, falsely? Should I have to wonder that maybe I didn't choose them at all? Of course I should. Whether Cancon exists or not, you can't expect to be lead to everything by chance. Not even considering the monetary aspect of music (boy would that be an essay), there is always an invisible hand guiding us for goals we may not understand or be immediately aware of. Through writing this I came to realize it may be less important to fight it than it is to do our best to be aware of it, or at least the nature of it, so we can be informed a little more than a slave or a sheep.

