Events
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The Check-In – August 2020
The Check-In is a weekly videohang/chat/networking session for women, trans, and non-binary folks in the music industry in August, 2020
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The Conductor – You’re Invited!
Sponsored Post: MK2 Mile End is excited to invite the Secret Frequency community to an exclusive, advance screening of THE CONDUCTOR on March 19th at 7:00 at Cineplex Yonge and Eglinton.
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Workshop: What Bookers Want – Band Promo 101 ONLINE
BAND PROMO 101 – A workshop to help you stop pissing off bookers and promoters and get more gigs. Sunday, April 4, 12:30pm – 4:30pm Sadleir House Lecture Hall, 751 George Street North
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Workshop: Band Promo 101 – Toronto
BAND PROMO 101 – A workshop to help you stop pissing off bookers and promoters and get more gigs.Saturday, March 23, 12:30pm – 4:30pmTrinity-St. Paul’s United Church and Centre for Faith, Justice and the ArtsThis venue is physically-accessible. The closest subway station is Spadina.We encourage women, racialized people, LGBTQ people, to attend. Workshop Fee $50; limited scholarships available. Contact candace@secretfrequency.ca for details BUY TICKETS HERE Promoters, Bookers, Agents, and Publicists may love your music, but may be quietly cursing you as they try to promote you. Do you have your promotional materials in place? Are they the right things? Do you know what you need? Do you know why it’s…
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Some thoughts about – and a good, green idea for – Music Submissions
There was a time, 15 years ago, when the wealth of CDs that suddenly started coming my way, as a full-time booker at a dive bar, was exciting and fun. Opening packages mailed from across the country was exciting – who knew what fabulous undiscovered gem was lurking inside that yellow padded envelope? Now I find myself looking at CDs – or any physical media music submissions – with a sense of weariness. The thrill of discovery is still strong, but it’s sometimes overwhelmed by the knowledge that every CD and paper package represents a use of resources that isn’t very smart or justifiable. I know there are some bookers/DJs/industry…
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Music City – A strategy
The points I’ve included below – headlined ‘A Strategy for Music Peterborough‘ – was created with my hometown in mind, but swap out a few names and organizations and this would be useful in any city to frame the way you approach different sectors with a view to creating a cohesive push to highlight music (or, I think, almost any local art or cultural highlight) and create a Music City mentality. I’ve made a few edits from the original document to make explicit the sort of things that I take as a given, but which aren’t obvious to everyone (like gender parity, inclusion of racialized people, good working conditions, etc.). A…
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Folk Alliance International Showcase
We’re heading on down to Kansas City in February with 3,000 of our closest friends and folkies to the Folk Alliance International Conference. Secret Frequency’s own Candace Shaw will be there, presenting a showcase room of Trad & International artists. Private showcases are the gem of music conferences; they are the late-night, hotel-room, no amplification opportunities for artists to play to a very, very intimate crowd – as many people who can cram into a hotel room. The next room over, there’s another band showcasing, and on and on, filling two full floors of the hotel with music and promoters and DJs and more. You’re up against If you can…
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What goes in an EPK?
It’s Autumn, the time of year when an artist’s thoughts turn to next Summer’s gigs. You’ve come off the road for the year, and you want to make sure that the promotional material that you’re putting out there is working for you. And you’re thinking of creating – or re-assessing – an EPK. An Electronic Press Kit is a page on your website that provides resources for bookers, media, and technicians. My theory is that a website, overall, is for personal interaction with fans, but the EPK page on your website is for your professional interactions. It’s for someone in a hurry who sees literally thousands of band sites and just wants…
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2014 Canadian Festival Report Card
In 2014, we made out first (of, hopefully, many) attempts to capture the data behind how many women are appearing on festival stages in Canada. We asked for volunteers to submit stats for festivals, looking primarily for how many bands played each festival, and how many of those bands were fronted by women. Here are the results: A 45% – 50%+ (2 festivals) Home County ON – 55.56% Wavelength ON – 50% B 35% – 44% (3 festivals) Summerfolk ON – 40.48% Montreal Folk Festival PQ – 40.91% Winnipeg Folk Festival MB – 40.48% C 25% – 34% (2 festivals) Sappyfest NS – 25.81% Wintergreen Concert…
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Ideas: the difference between a folk festival and a music festival
The difference between a music festival and a folk festival isn’t the kind of music they book. I can’t tell you what is and is not folk music; like most genres, the definition is shifty and slippery and very personal, and I’m not too interested in what it really is. And I don’t pay much mind to people who complain that Folk festivals don’t book folk music any more, partially because I think the argument is bullshit, partially because I think that a lot of musical traditions have picked up some of the torches that folk has dropped, but mostly because I don’t think a Folk Festival is defined by…
