Country Connections Goes Virtual
On Thursday, May 14th, CIMA with our international export partners hosted our first Country Connections in a virtual setting. Country Connections has been a collaborative effort between CIMA, Sounds Australia, Music New Zealand, Music from Ireland and the UK (through British Underground and DIT) for almost a decade. Through the years we’ve collaborated at big conferences such as SXSW and TGE and genre based events like AmericanaFest and FAI, with the purpose of bringing people together from different countries to connect in business. These events, which have included round table topical discussions, market sharing, industry one on ones and networking have provided thousands of new international business relationships throughout the years. As we all know, COVID-19 has stopped the way we usually do business internationally and shut down touring but that doesn’t mean globally we have to stop connecting and sparking new relationships.
Last week, we had 12 countries and almost 100 business participants register to network with internationals. We broke into smaller round table sessions to make introductions and have general discussions about the music industry in this time. Participants shared new music files, web sites and their catalogues in the private chats and many planned to follow up with one another. This was the Pilot session of Country Connections and was centered around the business representatives of the artists who would’ve been going to The Great Escape in Brighton, UK at that time.
We thank the, just over 20, Canadians who got up really early to put their networking caps on. Thank to our additional export teams from Chile, Music Estonia, Norway, Italy and the Bureau Export France for assisting with curation and moderation. Stay tuned for more from our monthly Country Connections Virtual series and please note, to accommodate time zones from all over the globe – host country times will vary.
CIMA gratefully acknowledges and thanks our generous sponsors and partners the Foundation Assisting Canadian Talent on Recordings (FACTOR), the Government of Canada (through the Canada Music Fund), Ontario Creates, the Radio Starmaker Fund, Re:Sound, The SOCAN Foundation and Stingray Music.
