The “60 Songs that Explain the ’90s” podcast wrapped last month with Semisonic’s “Closing Time,” the 120th song that host Rob Harvilla dissected over a run of more than three years, proof that even the here-we-are-now-entertain-us generation is a sucker for nostalgia. 

Canada was represented on the list by Céline Dion, Alanis Morissette and Shania Twain. A bonus episode on songs that were excluded also had a dollop of Canadian content. Harvilla was roasted for excluding “Life Is a Highway.” CBC Radio host Elamin Abdelmahmoud showed up to protest the absence of The Tragically Hip, even though the band never cracked the Top 100 on Billboard’s album charts. 

Naturally, Harvilla wanted to know how a band that filled arenas in Canada could go mostly unnoticed in America. Among the explanations Abdelmahmoud offered was the Canadian content rules, which since the early 1970s have required radio stations to ensure roughly 35 per cent of their playlists consist of music that meets the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission’s definition of a Canadian song. 

“Thirty-five per cent?” said an astonished Harvilla. “I didn’t know it was that high.” 

The Canadian music industry kept its protections even as most of the rest of the economy was exposed to global competition throughout the 1990s and 2000s. The industry’s subsequent success makes you wonder if Canada hopped on the free trade bandwagon too soon. There are no Célines or Shanias in our manufacturing and pharmaceutical sectors. Maybe Canada wasn’t ready for the big leagues. That at least is the lesson emerging industries appear to have drawn from that period. 

“This idea that all we need to do is just throw open competition and everything will be fine, I think is the wrong diagnosis,” Ben Bergen, president of the Canadian Council of Innovators, a lobby group for fast-growing technology companies, told The Globe and Mail last month. “What we actually need is complex, robust industrial strategies that lead us from idea creation, idea retention and then the selling of that idea globally through a domestically headquartered firm.” 

The lobby for Canada’s would-be tech behemoths sounds envious of Drake and The Weeknd. 

Abdelmahmoud suggested Cancon rules are uncontroversial here, and it does seem that we’ve moved beyond moaning about the government forcing us to listen to Platinum Blonde when what we really wanted was more Duran Duran. Maybe that’s because most of us have been listening to whatever we wanted for much of the past decade on services such as Spotify and Apple Music, which avoided Cancon requirements—until now.  

The Online Streaming Act received royal assent a year ago this month. The CRTC, which under the new law will now regulate streaming platforms as well as traditional broadcasters, is figuring out how it will execute the government’s wishes, including instructions to ensure it will “maximize its use of Canadian creators and strongly support the creation and discovery of diverse Canadian programming.” 

Music Canada—the trade association that represents the Canadian arms of Sony Music, Universal Music and Warner Music—is approaching the rule-making phase like it’s a make-or-break moment for the industry. 

“This is a once-in-a-generation regulatory process,” Patrick Rogers, the association’s chief executive, said in an interview. 

Given the stakes, you might expect a trade association to hammer policymakers with suggestions that best suit its members. Rogers opted for a different strategy. 

Music Canada published research this week by Will Page, a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and former chief economist at Spotify, that attempts to create a map of the Canadian streaming universe and assess where Canadian artists fit within it. Page offered some scenarios for the CRTC’s consideration, but there are no policy prescriptions.“Music Canada’s goal is to make sure that before we set out to fix anything, we understand exactly what’s going on,” Rogers said. 

It seems clear that trying to regulate the streamers like radio stations would be close to impossible—there’s too much content. Page narrowed his focus to the 10,000 artists and songs most streamed in Canada. Canadian artists made up about 11 per cent of the 10,000 in 2021 and 2022, and the highest deciles of streaming include a greater number of Canadian artists than the lower segments, suggesting that even if a few obvious megastars are driving the bus, the seats directly behind them are full.   

That’s good market penetration. Page cited research that suggests British artists make up about 40 per cent of the U.K. market, but the home of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones probably isn’t a reasonable comparison. Meanwhile, among the top 1,000 songs streamed globally, Canadian artists rank behind only those from the U.S. and the U.K. 

Page also cited research that suggests the Canadian music business is on the verge of becoming a $1-billion dollar industry for the first time ever, mostly because of surging streaming revenue. So the domestic industry no longer looks like it’s in danger of being overrun by foreign competition. 

One of the scenarios that Page presents to the CRTC is to simply leave things alone. Piracy no longer is an issue, in part because legal streaming works so well. Too much regulation could change that. Page also warns that policymakers shouldn’t assume that current growth is sustainable; it will plateau once a critical mass of the population have streaming subscriptions. Cost-benefit analysis should be based on that reality, not the hyper growth of the adoption phase, he says. 

The best option might be Page’s second scenario, which would see regulators mandate support of Canadian music, then let the streamers decide how best to do it. Page suggested that if companies such as Spotify are forced to pay levies, the money could be used to help Canadian artists who want to tour internationally, for example, since the biggest audiences are overseas. 

As many industries turn away from globalization, maybe one that has benefited from decades of protection will finally embrace it. 

Kevin Carmichael is The Logic’s economics columnist and editor-at-large. He has spent more than two decades covering economics, business and finance for outlets including Bloomberg News, The Globe and Mail and the Financial Post, where he also served as editor-in-chief.