With Jennifer Brownas CEO, SOCAN, the rights organization that collects and distributes publishing royalties for musicians and rights-holders, hit a major milestone in 2023: more than half a billion dollars in revenue. SOCAN makes sure that Canadian musicians and songwriters receive their share, so it is a crucial behind-the-scenes company for the most important people in music: the creators. On SOCAN and as Vice-Chair of the CISAC board of directors, Brown is an advocate for the protection and value of artists’ work. On the policy and advocacy side, Brown has been instrumental in the modernization of the Broadcasting Act to ensure digital platforms contribute to promotion of Canadian music. The result, the Online Streaming Act, could determine the future of CanCon. SOCAN is also urging the government to adopt transparency when it comes to AI and properly reward human rights-holders, another hot button issue in the industry.

Funding plays an instrumental role in Canadian music, and FACTOR is one of the most significant investors in the development, financing and support of Canadian talent and companies. Meg Symsyk became FACTOR CEO in 2021, and she’s helped the industry through a tough transitional time recovering from the pandemic. She helped deliver $50 million to relief programs for the live sector and, in addition to its musician grants for live performance, recording and development, helped FACTOR introduce two new modern programs this year: Juried Sound Single/EP and Mid-Tier Envelope for Music Companies. FACTOR received a boost from the Canadian government through the Canada Music Fund and will continue to advocate for Canadian creators and companies through the Online Streaming Act’sdevelopment, with a new culture at FACTOR through multiple staff additions. Symsyk had a couple of other big achievements this year. One, she took a “vacation” to manage and launch the book tour for Geddy Lee’s My Effin’ Life, which grossed over $3 million in ticket sales with the book hitting multiple bestseller lists. Two, as she tells Billboard Canada succinctly, “beat cancer.”

Neill Dixon is captain of the Canadian Music Week ship as it celebrates its 42nd edition this year. Still the pre-eminent industry event in Canadian music, the festival and conference continues to expand with recent developments such as the company’s inaugural Scotiabank Arena Bursary Program, a partnership with Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment that offers 15 aspiring music executives passes to this year’s summit. CMW has become an umbrella of sorts, with the Live Music Industry Awards, The Indies awards, Jim Beam National Talent Search, Radiodays North America and the Canadian Sync Awards – all influential in their own right – taking place at the event, which brings the music business to Toronto for a week every year.

As country music continues to experience a boom on the charts and the stage, Amy Jeninga and the Canadian Country Music Association are making sure Canadians are part of the conversation. The 2023 CCMA Awards show saw an increase in engagement of 18.42% across broadcast, editorial and social media, as Canadian stars like Jade Eagleson, Tenille Townes, and Josh Ross took home awards. The CCMA supports Canadian development through programs like the Top of the Country competition and Country Music Week, which hosts talent showcases, a songwriters series and more. 2023’s Country Music Week delivered $11.3 million in impact for host city Hamilton, and this year’s edition in Edmonton is sure to be the talk of the town, culminating in the awards ceremony hosted by MacKenzie Porter — Albertan on the verge of a U.S. breakthrough — and American superstar Thomas Rhett.

The leadership skills of record label veteran Shaver (Virgin, EMI Music Canada, Universal Music Canada, Open Road Records) have boosted the Canadian Musical Reproduction Rights Agency (CMRRA) significantly since he became President in 2019. The org has reported a 129% year-over-year increase in historical/back-claims from Digital Service Providers and a 507% surge in 'International' collections. In June 2022, Shaver launched SX Works, a division of SoundExchange that enables organizations to manage their repertoire across the music ecosystem outside of Canada. In January, COSCAP, a leading Caribbean copyright society, partnered with CMRRA and SX Works to represent their member interests in Canada and the U.S. with the Mechanical Licensing Collective. In December, Shaver told Billboard Canada he forecasted a 10% increase in client distributions to publishers and self-published songwriters for 2023, and noted that “the hard-working teams at CMRRA and SoundExchange successfully transitioned us to an improved royalty processing system for digital collections.”

With publishing catalogues becoming an increasingly central market in the music industry, Music Publishers Canada and Margaret McGuffin are working to promote and protect songs and scores at home and internationally. The organization, which represents major and independent music publishers in Canada, is taking charge of pressing concerns in the industry, advocating for rights holders in the face of AI tools that rely on copyrighted material. The organization also works to create a more diverse industry: in 2019, McGuffin led the launch of Women in the Studio National Accelerator program, to address the gender gap in music production (in 2023, women produced just 6.5% of 1200 Hot 100 charting songs). McGuffin additionally spearheaded the new NXTGen membership program for music publishing professionals, as well as overseeing an annual Music Tech Summit and MPC’s CREATE trade missions to help connect Canadian music publishers with the global community.