Perhaps one of the hottest ticket panel discussions at last week's NXNEi conference-- the digital offset of the long-running week-long music festival--was the unveiling of Toronto's Music City Campaign 2.0.

Known as 4479 Toronto, the campaign--named after the city's longitude and latitude points--aims to change the dynamic of music's role in the economy, tourism and culture by aligning itself with destination greats such as Austin and Nashville. 

 

"Toronto has been missing an enormous opportunity to promote and leverage its music scene," Josh Colle, Councillor of Ward 15 (Eglinton-Lawrence), said at the panel discussion. 

 

He is advocating the push for a music office in Toronto's city hall as well as a music advisory committee; something he says is "pivotal" to establishing a strong music foundation in this city.

This advisory board has existed unofficially for more than six months now, consisting of several representatives from Music Canada (who have spearheaded the rebranding), Collective Concerts, Jeff Cohen (owner of the Horseshoe Tavern and Lee's Palace), Colle's fellow panelists Mike Tanner (manager, communications at NXNE), Andrew Weir (Tourism Toronto) and Jesse Kumagai (Director of Programming for the Corporation of Massey Hall and Roy Thomson Hall), as well as a slew of other industry professionals and supporting councillors. 

 

Colle will be bringing forward a motion to formalize the industry advisory committee at the City of Toronto's upcoming economic-development committee (which focuses on tourism and economic development in the city) meeting on June 25. If approved, the motion will go forward to the entire city council in July. 

 

The push for an office comes out of a report that was unveiled at last year's NXNEi conference comparing Austin to Toronto. Austin is a fraction of the size of Toronto, but generates three times more economic activity than Toronto on music alone. One of the things it looked at was Austin's music office. Shortly after the report was released, cities around the world including Hamilton, Melbourne, Peterborough, Chicago and others began looking into launching music offices of their own. Many of these cities since have.

 

"Initially the office would probably be one person, but there are two key buckets the role would fall into," Councillor Colle said in a follow-up interview. "One would be some of the nitty-gritty that people in the live sector have to deal with when dealing with city hall. That can be noise exemptions, street permits for festivals, issues of postering bylaws that clubs might be facing, all those issues that are kind of nuts-and-bolts but are important for the industry to have. 

 

"The other part of if that I think is probably more important is looking at music like we do other sectors of the city and looking at opportunities to grow that sector. We do that with digital, some manufacturing sectors, and to have that kind of sector approach where we can start to mobilize the industry a bit, but also start to look at ways we can promote and leverage it for tangible economic gain."

 

With more venues than anywhere else in Canada, there is live music of virtually every genre taking place on any given night in Toronto. This is not an exaggeration. Anyone who spent any time in Toronto this past weekend could tell you that. 

 

Simultaneously, the city was drowning in music with more than 1,000 bands playing 55 venues as part of North by Northeast (the Canadian version of Austin's South by Southwest), much of Queen Street was in disarray and shut down due to the annual MuchMusic video awards, Taylor Swift had girls in cowboy boots and crochet dresses flocking the streets for back-to-back sold out shows at the ACC, and the Luminato Festival opened with musical performances across the city.

 

Imagine, the panel said, if "going to Toronto" was a trip that warranted no further explanation, that the world would know this meant the traveller was off to experience music and culture in one of North America's largest cities. The campaign's branding shifts away from conventional tourism crusades and features a video highlighting Toronto as a rock'n'roll city. 

 

"I think there's this whole other story that we haven't told enough and we haven't boasted about proudly enough. The hipsters and music industry people know about it, but we need to start telling the rest of the world about it so that kid from Boise, Idaho might want to come here for a vacation because he knows he can see some cool sights and also pack in a band every time he's here," Councillor Colle said. 

 

"With a bit of attention and a few key structures, we think Toronto could match or surpass the activity taking place in Austin," Henderson said. "We think we can attract larger audiences from around the world, create a climate for more shows…more opportunities for artists and musicians."

 

For this to be successful, Councillor Cole seeks to engage the people aspect, those who are fans of and support music the music industry. He is encouraging people to write to their councillors supporting his motion for a music advisory board and music office in Toronto. Confident the initial motion will pass, the official 4977 Toronto website will have additional information on this when the full site launches in July.

 

"I certainly think this could increase our cool factor, but I also think it's time Toronto stop being so timid. We've got to start being bold and telling our great story and there's no better way to tell the great story of Toronto than through our music," Councillor Colle said.

We asked him to share one of his own. 

 

"I remember once as a kid being at Grossman's Tavern and they had an open mic on Sundays and it was mostly a bluesy crowd, but you got an eclectic mix. This was at the time when Jeff Healey was really huge, and there was a woman playing amplified harp and then he kind of saddles up out of nowhere and the two of them do "Purple Haze" by Jimi Hendrix. It was wild, a woman on a harp and him playing guitar on his lap. That's the kind of stories and everyone has a story like that, the floor you think is going to collapse at Sneaky Dee's or seeing a young band before they were anything, seeing Emily Haines [from Metric] perform at the church on Bloor and Avenue." 

 

As the motion moves forward, 4479 Toronto also plans to initiate the launch of a citizen group similar to Austin's Musicians Initiative Working Group. They hope this group will speak up against threat's to Toronto's music industry, such as development proposals that squash landmark venues. 

 

The greatest hope is that a music office, advisory committee and citizen group will eventually do for Toronto what the opening of a film office began doing for the film industry some 25 years ago. 

Sheena Lyonnais is Yonge Street's managing editor. She also runs a music blog over at TorontoMusicScene.ca and is passionate about music's role in city-building and cultural identity.