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Nominations Open for Billboard Canada Power Players 2024

Billboard's influential list of music executives and industry members comes to Canada this June. The nomination form is now available here.

Nominations Open for Billboard Canada Power Players 2024

The wait is over. The most impactful members of the Canadian music industry now have access to the most influential list of executives in music, Billboard Power Players. With Power Players expanding to Canada for the first time in 2024, nominations have now officially opened via this nomination form. The deadline for nominations is April 25, 2024.

Canada’s music industry stands on the precipice of major changes. Canadian Content regulations are being reconsidered for the first time in a generation, media and broadcasting face new unprecedented new challenges, and technology redraws borders, removing barriers to major breakout success for the country’s artists.


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For its relative size, the country has produced some huge international success stories over the last decade, with artists like Drake, The Weeknd, Shawn Mendes, Justin Bieber and Tate McRae making big waves on the world stage. That's the case behind the scenes, too.

Some members of the country’s industry have been honoured by previous editions of Billboard’s Power Players.

2023’s edition of the International Power Players, especially, was loaded with Canadian talent. Among others, it included Kristen Burke, the President of Warner Music Canada and the only female head of a major label in Canada; Wassim “Sal” Slaiby of The Weeknd’s XO Records and the founder of Universal Arabic Music; and Vivian Barclay, Warner Chappell Music’s managing director of Canada and the Board President of ADVANCE, Canada’s Black music collective.

Michael Rapino, the Canadian-born President and CEO of Live Nation, meanwhile, finished fourth on the recently revealed 2024 Power 100 list, behind only Taylor Swift and the global CEOs of two major labels.

Billboard Canada Power Players, however, will be the first time the award will be exclusive to Canadians or those who’ve made impact in Canada’s music industry.

Interested parties can nominate their peers starting today. The award will recognize members of many different branches of the Canadian music industry, including labels, distributors, live, publishing, streaming, radio, legal, rights orgs, associations and more.

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Billboard Canada’s Power Players list will be revealed in June.

Apply for nominations here.

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Executive of the Week: Justin West of Secret City Records on the Secrets of Independent Music Success​
FYI

Executive of the Week: Justin West of Secret City Records on the Secrets of Independent Music Success​

The man behind one of Canada's most successful indie labels talks about the late-blooming success of French-language streaming record-holder Patrick Watson, why he builds long-term relationships with artists, and why it's important for the indie sector to work together.

Justin West is a leader and advocate in Canada’s independent music scene, but he didn’t plan it out that way. When he started his record label Secret City Records in Montreal in the mid-2000s, it was out of necessity. He had met an artist he loved and wanted to build a career with, and the label was a means to do it. That artist was Patrick Watson, and 20 years later he — and Secret City — are more successful than ever.

West — a multiple time Billboard Canada Power Player – leads one of the biggest indie labels in Canada while also advocating for the sector on multiple boards both locally and internationally. When we speak to him for this Executive of the Week interview, he’s just returned from Banff for the National Summit on Artificial Intelligence and Culture, and is a central figure in discussions around the Online Streaming Act and collective negotiations with online streaming platforms.

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