MusicTT updates stakeholders on initiatives

The production of extended play records from Spotlight artists, a push for local artists to be represented at the Recording Academy, and educational webinars are just some of the programmes carried out by the TT Music Company Ltd (MusicTT) over the past three years.

The programmes were carried out in line with the organisation’s mandate to stimulate and facilitate the business development and export activity of the music industry in TT to generate national wealth.

So said general manager Melissa Jimenez, outlinining the projects during the webinar What's Happening at MusicTT? on Thursday.

Jimenez said in 2019, the organisation completed the second edition of its Spotlight series, its artist portfolio development programme. She said the Live Music District programme expanded to the WE Beat festival and Carifesta.

“MusicTT hosted three Caribbean Business of Music Export workshops, created the RVRB monthly webinar series with industry professionals, and partnered with the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) and TT Intellectual Property Organisation to produce the second-ever Building Respect for IP video. We also partnered with sync-licensing company SoStereo to enable artists to monetise their music.”

Jimenez said with the advent of the pandemic in 2020, most of the programming moved online. She said 2020’s programmes included a partnership with Aspire Agency and Golden Eagle to produce three online quarantine concerts, the first of which was attended by 59,000 people, with the others drawing similar numbers.

“Spotlight 3 was completed, and in addition to the training provided through the programme itself, the participants got a novel masterclass on Trademarks with Carla Parris, one-on-one mentorship with producer Kasey Phillips, and received scholarships for Coursera to do courses from Berklee College of Music.

"The Live Music District partnered with the then Ministry of Community Development, Culture and the Arts to produce 12 Live at Lunch events and produced seven We Inside Instagram events.”

In addition, 15 RVRB virtual webinars were hosted, and 15 people were chosen to attend an Audio Essentials Song writing session with Theron Thomas of R City.

“We’re most proud of having Port of Spain recognised as a City of Music under the UNESCO Creative Cities Network. This was a year-long application process, so we’re very proud of this achievement.

"We hosted ten episodes of Tea Time with MusicTT, featuring local and international music business professionals. We also partnered with Thrive for Crea8 48 to do an international online showcase for creative industries, which got a lot of visibility.”

Jimenez said board members of MusicTT sat on panels at the international Music Imbizo conference in August 2020, and the organisation was represented at the MIDEM conference in July.

An integral addition of a resources page was made to the MusicTT website, which lists links to resources for artists in TT, including country-specific contracts.

The organisation kept going in 2021, getting sync placement for artist Daniel Hamilton with Zumba through its partnership with SoStereo. It also launched the Spotlight 3 EP and distributed it across multiple platforms, and launched the Spotlight 4 programme. Jimenez said the participants again received Coursera scholarships for Berklee College of Music courses.

“We also launched the Steelpan Business – Global Entrepreneurship Week, conducted a three-part Future Proofing TT Music panel discussion, partnered with the Gospel Music Assoiciation of TT, and partnered with Therapy to present the Island Stage at the SXSW music festival, which we were told was the most listened-to at the festival.

"The RVRB music business and DIY musician series celebrated two seasons, we hosted a Business of Music course and workshops and had a Music Release Road Map live discussion with Braveboy and Rai.”

MusicTT director Martin “Mice” Raymond said the organisation will be working on two initiatives.

One is getting more musicians to become voting members of the Recording Academy. He said this meant there would be more representation of local music at the level of the Grammy Awards.

“This year saw an increase of local artists as voting members in the academy. All artists who are at a certain level of their careers can be members of the academy.

"Kasey Phillips and Martin Fuentes started a drive with music producers and artists to apply to become members of the academy, and MusicTT will be doing a campaign to get more musicians to go through the process.”

He said a new music category had been introduced this year by the Grammys, for Best Global Music performance.

“Usually music nominated for the Grammys has to be part of an album, and it took work to make the academy realise that there is a whole world of music outside of the US and the UK that is driven by singles. We hope to see a number of submissions in that category this year.”

Raymond said MusicTT is also working on creating an official local music chart with the use of YouTube and Spotify statistics, information collected by the Copyright Organisation of TT, streaming and tracking radio play, and other data sources. He said this would be a step towards making TT more visible in a business sense worldwide.

The webinar can be found on the Trinidad & Tobago Music Company Ltd's Facebook page.