Almost every day of the week there is some amazing underground Montreal music being performed.
Some nights it’s an open mic or a showcase. Other nights are raves and concerts featuring all the talent levels you can think of. It’s a gift to live in a metropolis with so much action.
The curse we face is that a lot of this happens invisibly. Whether it’s a lack of interest or good marketing, people seem unaware how much is going on. This is what we call a pain point.
Something that creates inconvenience for the people at large that once rectified will result in a smoother reality for everyone involved.
In this case we need one place where we can get all the data and information relevant.
Not something that promotes the hype content, something that promotes everything.
We lack a sense of scope in the local community
There are thousands of English rappers in Montreal if you include everyone publishing.
It may be between 2000-3000 active participants. This would include people taking it real seriously and also include people freestyling on TikTok via stitches. People disagree with my assessment but when the regular degulars encounter rappers, they include everyone.
Because all the people, in all tiers present themselves the same. They tell people they rap, or make Hip Hop or even vaguely music. Regardless of how authentic things are, the branding has become what it has become.
Now seeing the total amount of people involved helps us begin to understand how relevant our accomplishments are. Is getting 500 views on a YouTube video good? This is super relative to what other people are getting.
Also 500 views is pretty bad in all circumstances. My music career has never really gotten the numbers I’d hope for. But there’s more to evaluating music success than streaming data.
Imagine there was something that tracked our ticket sales at each show pretty publicly, I bet most of us don’t really want that.
Tracking trends and originality is complicated when no one does market research
I’ve encountered a lot of people who think they are creating original sounds, but actually are dopplegangers of other people in the scene.
A lot of people are out there doing cool and creative things. Now because they don’t have any sense of what’s out there in our scene, they lose perspective on how their music sounds next to others. Which means they aren’t aware of people making similar music to them, and also aren’t collaborating with those people.
The promoters who book artists have no idea how to find artists that fit the sound and vibe they are looking for. There’s no easy way to search for people. The “Top Montreal Rapper” lists curate the same people that dominate the numbers game. Even the people who are in the media struggle to find relevant people, there are just so many pockets of the scene without any glue.
We can’t see what works. We can’t see what doesn’t work. We effectively throw shit at the wall over and over again without any meaningful way to share results.
People want to talk about the collaboration game but often we just run in circles doing the same kind of thing on repeat.
Those of us that want to build something greater need to really focus on how to solve the systemic issues we face.
I think this starts with a database.
We the people on the ground can track the relevant data and share it
I have a Hubspot document with about 500 rappers listed.
If we can grow that to 2000 English Montreal rappers. Maybe grow it to 10000 including all the French artists. Expand it beyond rappers and include other genres. This can grow into a real asset that helps us all organize and create the different waves we need to make.
This is different from a DMS. DMS is a wonderful asset and they have shed light on the best of us. However I see them as someone who highlights the best.
What I’m proposing is more akin to a not for profit effort. Something we could get research grants for. Something that promotes literally everyone, instead of applying any level of discrimination.
This would turn our scene into data that can be framed in ways to help us get investments. Imagine if we really understood the amount of people involved in our scene in a clear and measurable way. That becomes evidence of a real dollar value we can use to tell rich people to throw money our way.
As a collective effort, this would be a wonderful boon for all of us.
Food for thought.Live Long and Prosper Everyone
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