Mathieu Drouin: FACTOR is the Foundation to Assist Canadian Talent on Record. It is one of several grant organizations. It receives money from the federal government as well as from the broadcasters—both television, but mostly radio broadcasters—who contribute money to the development of Canadian talent. Not entirely out of the goodness of their heart but largely as a criteria of their license with the CRTC, their broadcast license. Or because in certain phases of consolidation, to gain industry support they agreed to for “x” number of years to pay a percentage of their advertising revenue in a pool of money that would be redistributed to various cultural sectors including the music industry.
So basically you got money coming from two sources: the federal government and the broadcasters. And then on a provincial level, in Ontario, Quebec, and Vancouver mostly, there are some government subsidies on a provincial level.
But, let’s say, just, it’s government money and it’s private money poured into FACTOR in varying percentages that funds a variety of programs from licensing and recording a record to marketing it, producing a video –
Francoise: Marketing. Promotion. Touring.
Mathieu Drouin: - going out on a tour, subscribing to Billboard, or paying for a Web site for the company to be built.
They have a variety of programs that are critical to the – I think, that one of the main reasons –
Francoise: What’s their Web site?
Mathieu Drouin: - the Canadian industry is as successful as it is in terms of the success of Canadian artists on the independent stage, is ‘cause a lot of these artists got to hone their skills and develop in an independent network. With the support financially of these organizations that allowed them to continue to pursue their dream or their art for as long as it took for them to break. And also helped them to develop the skills that they needed to do their job correctly.
Interviewer: You owed them money back?
Mathieu Drouin: Almost everything is a grant, with the exception of the licensing or album production financial contribution which a loan. But is a conditional non-recourse loan. So you pay it back as a percentage of your revenues if you have success. And if you don’t have success after two years, they let you wipe it off your books.
Yeah, it’s cool.
But I mean they don’t hand that out. You have to have proven – you basically, 20 percent of the money goes to just anybody who applies –
Francoise: Jury process.
Mathieu Drouin: - with a valid product through what’s called the jury process. The rest of the money goes to three tiers of established companies. And you basically have to have proven that you can make money and survive on your own, that they’re not just live-supporting a deadweight, deadwood company. You prove that you can succeed with it, and then they give you the money to further your success, if you know what I mean.
And there’s FACTOR. There’s also Starmaker, which is for a little bit more established artist. You can’t access that until you’ve sold ten thousand copies. FACTOR’s accessible out of the box and then more money as you sell more projects.
And I wanna name them all because I think they all deserve the recognition. There’s also VideoFACT, PromoFACT –
Francoise: VideoFACT. PromoFACT.
Mathieu Drouin: - Bravo!FACT, and MaxFACT which are four video or Web site related funding organizations. Funded mostly by Much Music and Music Press; Starmaker is funded by the radio broadcasters. And then there’s FACTOR. Or on a province, on a French, pardon me, provincial level, in Quebec there’s also MusicAxion which the French counterpart of FACTOR ‘cause it’s federal money and we’re a bilingual country so they finance both language artists.
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