Below is a breakdown of the CEO statement issued last week based on the knowledge we have gathered to date. Please find notes in bold.
As CEO of the East Coast Music Association, I welcome the opportunity to transparently address recent concerns circulating regarding changes within the organization. Since stepping into this role in March 2024 and with a clear mandate to foster diversity, equity, and inclusion, I have been dedicated to ensuring that the ECMA continues to evolve with industry trends while staying true to its long-standing mission of supporting the artists, industry professionals, and cultural stakeholders of Atlantic Canada.
In these first six months of my appointment, we have hosted community consultations:
Misleading branding/bad timing/little notice/not inclusive of all ECMA regions
JAM: Join Atlantic Canadian Musicians Town Hall. “meet our CEO, light refreshments, share your thoughts, relaxed open discussion.”
with hundreds of artists and industry professionals, including through in-person town halls in
Charlottetown, PE (March 2024, May 2024): In the middle of the event at exactly the same time as the VIP one on one business meetings were happening.
Sydney, NS (May 2024) can find nothing in the ECMA newsletter
and St. John’s, NL (June 2024) can find nothing in the ECMA newsletter but did see a social media post the day of the event. A participant described it as a happy hour meet and greet where people mingled but no structured conversation took place.
NO CONSULTATION CITED FOR MAINLAND NOVA SCOTIA OR NB.
After a successful ECMA this year, our team: This did not include long-term contractors: Export Manager, Conference Manager, Operations Manager or TD. A wealth of institutional knowledge and industry experience was deliberately excluded from the process.
and I took some time to review extensive feedback through our post-event surveys and one-on-one consultations.
It was after that process that we took some time to evaluate resources and identify improvements to ensure operational stability. This led to planning and implementing some new policies and processes and making some changes to our awards, structure, and internal roles.
Overall, our programming structure will remain much the same this year: five days of celebration including a festival, two awards shows, a conference, and an export program (now called the Accelerator Program). The community can expect complete information about these elements as they are announced.
Awards
This comes back to research and consultation. Was research/consultation done with similar events? The MIA’s? Western Canadian Music Awards? Canadian Folk Music Awards, Canadian Country Music Awards, Canada Music Week Awards, Junos? Was outreach done to past jurors (many of whom have been jurying for many years)? Did the membership weigh in on any of this? Why is there no board-chaired committee for Awards & Eligibility?
Our award submissions process was updated this year, as is done annually at ECMA to ensure the integrity and value of ECMA awards. We identified a need to address discrepancies between genre-based awards in order to ensure fairness and consistency across award categories, keep in step with industry trends, and curb reliance on streaming giants for metrics of success.
In past years, there were inconsistencies between award categories that seemed to be mainly based on each award’s individual history. For instance, some genre-based awards required a full-length album, while others required just three tracks, and many newer awards required just one track for consideration. While no system is perfect for judging a body of work, our decision was to determine a common benchmark across categories. For genre-based awards, we moved to requiring just one release for adjudication, with two accompanying contextual releases to demonstrate sufficient artistic activity. This has the added benefit of being in line with industry trends, as singles have been the dominating format for several years now, especially in certain more budding genres. But it was first and foremost a question of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Album of the Year is still judged on the entire album and will be juried accordingly. All other categories are based on a single track, making them more open to artists from different communities and thereby fostering fairness and inclusion.
Another change has been the evaluation of success in our award processes. In 2023, our Album of the Year category defined the following eligibility criteria:
Social media following of at least 5,000 followers on all platforms combined.
One tour outside of your home province within the eligibility period.
Three festival dates outside of your home province within the eligibility period.
Media coverage that is national in scope within the eligibility period.
100 units sold or 15,000 cumulative streams of music released within the eligibility period.
Substantial amount of video plays, demonstrated by one (1) of the following:
Over 5,000 views on at least one video
Cumulative views exceeding 10,000 on all videos
These criteria aimed to capture an artist’s success. However, we identified that items like social media following, touring, and media coverage did not directly relate to the success of the album being evaluated. Furthermore, many artists shared with us that they felt these figures did not reflect the divergent realities of different genres and regions. This narrow definition of success made it difficult for many artists to be considered, even while they were seeing major success in ways more reflective of their own genre and region. Streaming numbers and views can easily be falsified, and relying on only this type of data does not reflect the entire breadth of the success to be celebrated.
The decision made across categories was therefore to let applicants define themselves what was successful about their album. This is again in line with principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion. The criteria of former years are still valid ways of defining success, alongside the many other ways. In rolling this out, we have received overwhelmingly positive feedback, with our Director of Programming tirelessly meeting and engaging with hundreds of applicants throughout the last few months. We are now aware from applicant feedback, including our post-submission survey, that the word count and questions could use some refining so as to avoid being overly burdensome. As our goal is for the process to be easy and focused on the quality of artists’ work, anything that has detracted from that will be corrected in consultation with members in time for our next submission process.
Technicians and production personnel
Technicians are extremely important to our industry. The past few years have been especially hard on production personnel, which has exposed the precarity and difficulty of this work. We share the community’s concern that the removal of the Audio Engineer of the Year Award could feel like a slight to technicians on a sector-wide level. In practice, our data shows that technicians have consistently not been seeking this award. In the past few years, we have not received enough applications to meet our category minimum. We therefore made the decision to encourage those who do wish to be recognized to apply to the Innovator of the Year award. ECMA has always had to do outreach for certain categories at different times. Again, how do the MIA’s handle that?
This data may mean that technicians are not seeking this kind of recognition, and that other ways of celebrating their accomplishments must be explored. We remain open to exploring a broader industry category that would recognize production personnel. For 2025, we plan to identify ways to recognize, appreciate and provide value to technicians that meet their needs and make them feel as valued as they are.
Strategic planning
The CEO actually said at the end of her VOCM interview last week that there isn’t a plan yet!!! In what world do you start making changes and then write a plan? What happened to standard business practice – research, consult, craft a plan, present it with a timeline and budget to the board for approval, present to the membership, execute?
Strategic planning is an ongoing process for an organization such as ECMA. These processes, especially in an organization representing thousands of artists across four provinces, need time. The ECMA board struck a Strategic Planning Task Force – who sits on this task force? We’ve been in touch with board members and ED’s of the MIA’s and dozens of industry members in the last month. No one has mentioned being on a Strategic Planning Task Force. What are the terms of reference for this task force? Which ECMA board member sits on/chairs this committee? in June 2024 and is beginning the work of securing funding and guidance and defining a process. This process is in motion and we appreciate your patience as we move forward with care and intention. The process is in motion? But the changes have/are already happening?
In the meantime, some steps to define a general framework to guide internal decision-making have been taken. We have defined four strategic pillars—Celebration, Engagement, Development, and Stewardship. While our activities in the short term will follow much the same format as in previous years, our hope is to expand our activities especially in the areas of year-round community engagement, advocacy, and artist and industry development. This new structure allows us to serve our community by fostering more collaboration, inclusivity, and representation.
Building our team
Our Marketing Manager position was expanded to a Director of Engagement position to reflect the larger role envisioned for ECMA communications and community involvement. A new Director of Artist & Industry Development role was also defined to oversee new directions in professional development, mentorship, and opportunities for our members.
Appointments were made through an open and transparent public search process, conducted in alignment with the organization’s evolving needs. Appointments? Is this to avoid the well established ECMA process of posting positions to members? A position was created and a hire was made without any advertising to membership or anyone else that we can find. This is not unusual within the sector, where organizations may retain multiple candidates from a single search for different roles.
Transparency in hiring is important, and we welcome any member feedback to further improve our hiring processes in the future. POST THE POSITIONS – it has been an ECMA policy for many years. A clear and consistent hiring process is key to preventing misunderstandings, allowing us to prioritize local hiring, and ensuring we build a dynamic team.
We’ve made these changes with an eye toward ensuring a plurality of voices around our decision-making table and building a team that is more diverse, bilingual, and regionally representative than ever before.
Honoring our roots, looking toward the future
A number of dedicated people have carried this association through its 37 years. We owe them a debt of gratitude. We have a responsibility to reflect the entire community, and because the community is always changing, ECMA also must evolve. We are grateful to have an engaged member community that wants to see this organization be the best and most supportive it can be. We can’t wait to show you what that will look and feel like in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador in 2025, and in the years to come.