Photo by Grant W. Martin Photography (of/de Brett Kissel, left/à gauche); courtesy/courtoisie de James Barker Band (right/à droite).

Nominees announced for 2019 Canadian Country Music Association Awards

Story by Howard Druckman | Thursday July 11th, 2019

The Canadian Country Music Association (CCMA) has announced its full list of nominees for the 2019 CCMA Awards, and leading the race with five nominations each are reigning 2018 Interactive Artist of the Year Brett Kissel, and 2018 Single of the Year Award-winning group James Barker Band.

Following closely behind, with four nominations apiece, are Paul Brandt, Lindsay Ell, Tim Hicks, The Reklaws, Tenille Townes, and Dallas Smith.

Nominees for Songwriters of the Year are:

  • Brett Kissel, Seth Mosley, and Brad Rempel, for “Cecilia,” performed by Brett Kissel
  • Gord Bamford, Bart Butler, and Brice Long, for “Down,” performed by Gord Bamford
  • James Barker, Todd Clark, Gavin Slate, and Travis Wood, for “Keep It Simple,” performed by James Barker Band
  • Corey Crowder, Jess Moskaluke, and Jared Mullins, for “Save Some of That Whiskey,” performed by Jess Moskaluke
  • Barry Dean, Luke Laird, and Tenille Townes, for “Somebody’s Daughter,” performed by Tenille Townes

Returning to the 2019 CCMA Awards broadcast after a 30-year hiatus, the Entertainer of the Year Award will see Paul Brandt, Dean Brody, Tim Hicks, Brett Kissel and Dallas Smith vie for the honour.

Nominees for the Apple Music Fans’ Choice Award are Brett Kissel, James Barker Band, Gord Bamford, Paul Brandt, Dean Brody, Tim Hicks, Hunter Brothers, The Reklaws, Dallas Smith, and Guylaine Tanguay.  Canadian country music fans can vote by clicking here.

The 2019 CCMA Awards will be broadcast live from Calgary, Sunday, Sept. 8, 2019, on Global at 9:00 p.m. EST/PST. Livestream details will be announced at a later date. For a complete list of nominees, click here.

SOCAN tests API at 2019 Wallifornia Music Tech Hackathon

Story by Howard Druckman, with files from/avec Ryan Maule | Tuesday July 16th, 2019

SOCAN tested, implemented, and received feedback on its Live Performances API (Application Program Interface) from two teams of app developers at the 2019 Wallifornia Music Tech Hackathon in Liège, Belgium, on July 2-3.

The teams’ goal for the 24-hour hackathon was to build apps that impact and interact with our own SOCAN Live Performances API – which already helps SOCAN capture information about a Live Performance, such as date, location, participants, and a setlist of the songs played, so that SOCAN can pay collected royalties to the appropriate party. The API integrates into different apps and services used by our partners, and speeds up the time to receive and process this information.

For the hackathon, SOCAN’s Program Lead for SOCAN Labs, Ryan Maule brought a new version of our API that not only was able to capture performance information for SOCAN, but also that of one of our sister music rights organizations (MROs), from Finland, Teosto.  This was the first demonstration of an inter-MRO API being used in public, and one of which both of our organizations are proud.

The first team, Simpler SOCAN, created a multi-platform (desktop and mobile web app) solution which allowed a music venue to easily provide information about live performances happening at their location, while the mobile component also allowed the public to see a list of the live performances taking place.  The team created a series of web forms to help facilitate the collection and submission of information back to SOCAN, or Teosto.

The second team, Facebook Royalties Management App, allowed artists and performers to log in to their app with Facebook credentials, extract (or “scrape”) event data to collect the necessary information about the performance, attach a setlist and then easily to submit to either SOCAN or Teosto.

Though neither of these apps won the hackathon, having our SOCAN API tested “in the wild” by developers, and be successfully implemented, gave us great feedback on, and stress testing of, our platform.  It also proved out that our new inter-MRO capabilities work, and is the start of helping to increase processing time and payments, across the industry, for live performances.

Photo by Grant W. Martin Photography, at the 2019 SOCAN Awards in Toronto/aux Prix SOCAN 2019 a Toronto.

Toronto to celebrate the life of Ralph Murphy on July 11, 2019

Story by Howard Druckman | Wednesday July 10th, 2019

Toronto is celebrating the life of Ralph Murphy on Thursday, July 11, 2019, at Louis Cifer Brew Works, at 417 Danforth Avenue. Hosted by Beverly Mahood, and running from 7:00 to 10:00 p.m., the evening will include performances by Jamie Warren, Patricia Conroy (a member of SOCAN’s Board of Directors), and more. Donations to the Unison Benevolent Fund will be accepted at the door, in celebration of Murphy’s life. All are welcome.

Murphy, one of the SOCAN family’s greatest friends, passed away in May of 2019 at the age of 75. He’d been writing songs, as he described it in a 2017 SOCAN Words & Music online magazine article, “since God wore short pants.” At the 2019 SOCAN Awards on April 1, we honoured Ralph with the Special Achievement Award for his generosity as a mentor to countless Canadian songwriters and music publishers.

The Nashville-based Murphy was a 2012 Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame inductee. He penned the No. 2 Jeannie C. Riley hit “Good Enough to Be Your Wife”; co-wrote the Crystal Gayle chart-topper “Half the Way”; co-wrote the Ronnie Milsap No. 1 hit “He Got You”; and enjoyed a No. 2 U.K. hit via Sir Cliff Richard, “21st Century Christmas.” He also had his tunes covered by Randy Travis, the late Don Williams, Ray Price, Shania Twain, Kathy Mattea, Little Texas, Brotherhood of Man, and Vanity Fare. His book, Murphy’s Laws of Songwriting: How to Write a Hit Song, has been endorsed by some of the art form’s most celebrated tunesmiths.