Julie Adam is having a milestone year — and it’s getting even bigger.
The president & CEO of Universal Music Canada is this year’s Billboard Canada Executive of the Year. She will accept the award at Billboard Canada Women in Music on Oct. 1 at Rebel in Toronto.
Adam was promoted to the head role at the beginning of this year and is now the only woman heading a major label in Canada.
Adam’s rise comes after decades of breaking barriers. She started in radio, becoming Canada’s first female Vice President of Radio Programming, and spent more than 20 years at Rogers Sports & Media before moving to Universal in 2023 as EVP & GM. It wasn’t long before she stepped into the top role, taking charge of Canada’s largest record company during a moment of change.
UMC is the market share leader amongst labels in Canada (the label has 7 of the top 10 albums year to date), with both domestic success for international artists and rising stardom for homegrown artists.
The past year has seen chart breakthroughs for artists like Josh Ross (who was among the most nominated artists at the Junos and CCMAs) and Toronto pop artist Sofia Camara, who hit the Billboard Canadian Hot 100 for the first time this week. Other artists, like Mae Martin and Owen Riegling, continue to make a big mark.
It’s no surprise Adam was named to the Billboard Canada Power Players list this year and to Billboard’s Global Power Players.
What makes Adam stand out — and what this award underlines — is not just the business, but the way she leads. Her book Imperfectly Kind doubles as her philosophy: that empathy and generosity can fuel success. Colleagues and artists alike point to her ability to create space for others to thrive, a rare quality in an industry often driven by competition.
Read more here. — Peony Hirwani
Canadian Music Industry Weighs in on How to Support Canadian Audio Content at CRTC Public Hearings
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC)’s “Supporting Canadian and Indigenous audio content” hearings are underway.
The CRTC proceedings are centred around the Online Streaming Act, a legislation that updates Canada’s Broadcasting Act for the new digital media landscape. It’s a once-in-a-generation update to CanCon regulations, and many stakeholders have been weighing in about how it should be implemented.
An important aspect to these hearings is last year’s CRTC decision to enforce major foreign-owned streaming services with Canadian revenues over $25 million to pay 5% of those revenues into Canadian content funds, like FACTOR and Musicaction. It’s been a major hot button issue, with pushback from the big major streaming services like Spotify and Amazon. After appealing the base contributions, the courts paused payments until an appeal.
That has been a big topic of conversation in arguments over a series of five days of hearings in Gatineau, Quebec, from September 18 to September 29.
The country’s federal government is under heavy pressure from the United States to forego the base contributions in the legislation, with 18 members of Congress signing a letter, claiming the act “imposes discriminatory obligations and threatens additional obligations imminently is a major threat to our cross-border digital trade relationship.”
CRTC regulations state that at least 35% of popular music picks on commercial radio stations must be Canadian content — but this standard doesn’t currently extend to music streaming services.
The goal of the hearings is to discuss how CanCon regulations can be adjusted in support of the changes taking place in the music industry and the Canadian broadcasting system, including the rise of streaming services, the decline of radio broadcasting alongside increasing support for Indigenous music and diverse Canadian artists.
In its notice of consultation on the hearing that began last week, the CRTC said streamers should “contribute to the discoverability of Canadian, French-language and Indigenous music either through financial contributions or through initiatives targeting the promotion and exposure of these songs to their users.”
Read more about the hearings here. — Heather Taylor-Singh
Kneecap Say They Haven’t Received Any Formal Notice After Ban From Canada
Kneecap have yet to receive official confirmation of its ban in Canada.
Last Friday (September 19), the Irish hip hop trio was ruled ineligible to enter the country by Liberal MP and Parliamentary Secretary for Combating Crime Vince Gasparro in a video posted to X.
While the ban forces the group to forfeit scheduled concerts in Toronto and Vancouver next month, Kneecap’s manager, Dan Lambert, said that the band hasn’t gotten any communication from the federal government.
“Nobody has instructed Kneecap that they can’t travel to Canada except Vince and his social media video,” Lambert tells CBC News.
During Gasparro’s video, he claimed the trio “have amplified political violence and publicly displayed support for terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah and Hamas,” and said he was making the announcement “on behalf of the Government of Canada.”
The ruling blocks Kneecap’s planned shows at Toronto’s History on October 14 and 15, as well as concerts at Vancouver’s Vogue Theatre on October 22 and 23.
Soon after the news broke out, Kneecap rejected the claims in an Instagram statement addressed directly to Gasparro, calling his remarks “wholly untrue and deeply malicious.”
The trio added that they’ve instructed their lawyer to initiate legal action against Gasparro. “We will be relentless in defending ourselves against baseless accusations to silence our opposition to a genocide being committed by Israel,” they said.
Kneecap vowed that if they win in court, they will donate all damages to “some of the thousands of child amputees in Gaza.”
“We’re pretty shocked that this could happen in Canada,” Lambert said to CBC News, adding the band has played in Canada multiple times. He noted that the only country where the group has been banned is Hungary.
Lambert said the case is due in court on Friday, and he fully expects the band to win.
Read more here. – H.T.S.
