What I’ve learned from Canadian music fans on my cross-country speaking tour

I've been on the road with speaking gigs for a good chunk of the year. Here's what I've learned from (and about) Canadian music fans so far.

I’ve spent a chunk of 2025 out on the road doing sold-out speaking engagements, covering (so far) Victoria and Nanaimo, B.C., to Ottawa. Fredericton, N.B., Halifax, Toronto and Whitby, Ont., are coming up before the end of the month (only Fredericton still has tickets) and there’s talk of doing something in Quebec in more points east in the fall.

I call these talks “salons,” an opportunity for like-minded music fans to gather to discuss what’s on their mind when it comes to the current state of music, the industry, radio, technology and more. I also find them very useful because I spend most of my time in a soundproof room talking to myself with absolutely no idea if anything I do and say has any impact on the public. Like I tell audiences, there’s nothing like having a room full of strangers tell you the truth about your work in real time.

I’ve done more than a hundred salons over the last five years, and I always find it instructive to learn what’s on the minds of Canadian music fans. Here’s what I’ve learned so far.

This is a topic that comes up almost every single time. Why is it so hard to get a ticket these days? Why do they cost so much? And how high will prices go? Canadians love their live music and they’re extremely frustrated by the hoops they have to jump through and the ticket-buying bots they have to battle. Many believe that Ticketmaster sets the price of a ticket (it does not; that’s the sole domain of the artist) and hate the concept of dynamic pricing (another decision made only by the artist). I’m also surprised at how many people believe that Ticketmaster owns StubHub (it does not, although Ticketmaster does engage in reselling tickets on its own platform).

How long will Canadian audiences be willing to pay higher and higher prices for concert tickets? If the people I talked to are any indication, they’re already checking out, deciding to spend their after-tax leisure dollars on essentials rather than fun. If this sentiment spreads from my salons to the country at large, we may see a lot of non-sellouts this summer, along with drastic last-minute drops in concert ticket prices just to fill the building.

And they love it. Stats say that around 85 per cent of Canadians listen to the radio every week and consider it to be an important part of their entertainment and information habits. But these audiences have also told me they’re worried about the future of the medium, especially when it comes to the rise of streaming. This usually leads to a discussion on how streaming doesn’t provide any context to any song served up by algorithms. Music fans still want to know the stories behind artists, songs, albums, scenes and sounds, something you don’t get from just listening to a stream. Radio is very good at providing that information, something for which music fans remain grateful.

Almost every salon has included a discussion of the state of Canadian music and CanCon regulations. The long and short of it is that there is a very, very strong love for domestic music combined with the ever-present frustration that some great Canadian artists can’t seem to break it in the United States. As for CanCon — the idea of Canadian radio playing a minimum amount of Canadian music each day — it isn’t really an issue. Unlike the ’70s and ’80s, when CanCon was synonymous with bad music (well, in the ears of some), there’s strong musical nationalism in this country. And when I point out that Canada is the eighth-largest music market in the world (and the country in the top 10 with the smallest population), there are always cheers.

When it comes to CanCon and streaming, there’s real concern that Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, and the rest of them aren’t pulling their weight when it comes to promoting Canadian music. If the people behind Bill C-11 want to know if their efforts have support, they should come out to one of these salons. They will be pleased. And when I tell them that the government is going to hold public hearings on the future of CanCon, they get very excited. They want to provide input.