Randy Lennox, president and CEO Universal Music in Canada. We are a company of about 350 people strong. We also have a number of part-time interns and street teams. For example, we have an urban street team handling that genre of music in every city in Canada. We have a rock street team that handles the rock genre of music in every city in Canada. We actually work out of 13 offices across the country.
One would think sometimes, “OK, what is the structure of your company? It’s Toronto-Montréal-Vancouver centric, for example.” That is true. Those three cities have very large staff for Universal. That said, though, we are in another 10 or so cities where we have representatives. This is to accommodate things like our touring artists, local radio, and retail in those marketplaces. So we actually operate in I think 13 cities in Canada, the head office being here in Toronto, Ontario.
We’re fortunate that Canada is an autonomous country. Sovereignty exists. It’s of great homage of respect to my bosses, Doug Morris and Zach Horowitz, that they understand the cultural difference in Canada means that sometimes we’re going to perform very well on a US-based repertoire. Other times, because Canadians want to grow up and be British, that we actually disproportionately perform on European and very much British repertoire.
For example, if you wanted to frame Canada as an industry, Canada is approximately 8% of the size of the US industry as a country. Universal Music Canada is slightly larger, and I’ll explain that in a few moments, of that proportional share. But for every 100 records that scan in the United States, about eight scan in Canada, to put it in perspective.
But we have an interesting cultural difference in the sense that, for example, Toronto is the most multicultural city on earth. Montréal, Québec, they all want to go off and be Parisian. We all want to grow up and be British, and some of us American, also. The incoming disparate nature of the musical cultures is a wonderful melting pot in Canada. The fact that our French-language population is 20% of Canada’s population, therefore a vibrant community in that market in isolation. That’s just an isolated, very anomalous marketplace in Québec. The fact that Vancouver and Toronto have a lot of British population, again, a band like Snow Patrol and Keen do very, very proportionately well in Canada because of our wanting to have that British cultural influence. We are a British colony, after all.
The fact that we’re at the 49th parallel, and we’re the little brother to the United States is also very influential. Interesting note—our proportion of country music in Canada, being the brother to the north, and urban music in Canada is not at that 8% level that I mentioned in terms of the overall aggregate market in this country. One of the inhibitors to that is that country music is very much a Western-Canadian phenomenon, sort of our equal to the Texas and Arkansas type of states, where in Toronto and certainly in Québec, country music really isn’t popular. In the case of urban music, given that our population in Canada is so multicultural, we don’t quite have an urban music base proportional to United States, either. Those are a couple of nuances.
I mentioned a few moments ago that sort of hodgepodge of French culture coming in and English culture coming in, some of the more mainstream urban in Canada sells very, very well. If you were to classify Black-Eyed Peas as urban, than we actually perform at 18% of the US on that band in an 8% market. There are exceptions where artists come and visit our country and do mainstream touring and work hard. We can actually enjoy up to 10-18% of the US sales on particular projects.
There is no rhyme nor reason to this, however. It’s just the way Canada sometimes embraces it. Another great example, which is not an urban one, is Jack Johnson. Here’s a surfer guy who you would associate with the California vibe. In Canada, we do almost 22% of what the US sells with a guy who’s a really American guy, but we fall in love in this country with Jack Johnson, like the Black-Eyed Peas. So proportionately, Canada is very embracive. We do embrace certain artists. I’d like to say that those artists that we embrace were all in one genre. The great news is, they are not. They’re all over the map.
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