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Home , 2019 in the Netherlands, 3VOOR12, Armada Music, Baroeg, Black Hole Recordings, Claw Boys Claw

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1 – THE AT A GLANCE...... 4 OVERVIEW...... 4 TRAVELLING IN THE COUNTRY...... 6 NATIONAL HOLIDAYS ...... 6 GEOGRAPHY OF THE NETHERLANDS...... 6 CLIMATE...... 7 POPULATION AND COUNTRY STATISTICS...... 7 POLITICAL STRUCTURE OF THE COUNTRY...... 7 ECONOMIC OVERVIEW ...... 8 ART AND HISTORICAL HIGHLIGHTS...... 9 LANGUAGES ...... 9 AVERAGE COSTS FOR EVERYDAY ITEMS ...... 9 AIRPORTS AND AIRLINES ...... 10 TRAINS...... 11 METRO, AND TRAMS...... 11 TRAVELLING TO THE NETHERLANDS...... 12 CONNECTIVITY...... 12

2 - THE DUTCH RECORDED MUSIC MARKET...... 13 HISTORY AND CURRENT STATE...... 13 RECORDED MUSIC MARKET...... 13 DIGITAL MUSIC SERVICES IN THE NETHERLANDS ...... 14 MUSIC DISTRIBUTION IN THE NETHERLAND...... 14 INDIE LABELS: INTERVIEW WITH KEES VEN WEIJEN (STOMP)...... 15 DUTCH MUSIC EXPORT: INTERVIEW WITH MARCEL ALBERS...... 17 DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION: INTERVIEW WITH DAVE DRIESSEN (FUGA) ...... 19 TOP ARTISTS IN 2019 IN THE NETHERLANDS ...... 21 SALES CHART ANALYSIS – TOP SELLERS 2019...... 21 RADIO CHART ANALYSIS – MOST PLAYED TRACKS 2019...... 22 LIST: STOMP MEMBERS...... 24 LIST: NVPI’S BOARD...... 25 LIST: NVPI MEMBERS...... 25

3 - THE LIVE MUSIC INDUSTRY IN THE NETHERLAND ...... 30 OVERVIEW OF THE LIVE MUSIC SCENE IN THE NETHERLANDS ...... 30 LIVE MUSIC: INTERVIEW WITH BEREND SCHANS (VNPF)...... 31 INTERVIEW WITH LOCAL CONCERT PROMOTER / FESTIVAL ORGANIZER: PETER SMIDT ()...... 32

4 - MUSIC PUBLISHING IN THE NETHERLANDS...... 35 OVERVIEW...... 35 LIST: NMUV’S BOARD...... 36 LIST: MUSIC PUBLISHERS IN THE NETHERLANDS...... 36

5 – COPYRIGHT & MUSIC RIGHTS ORGANISATIONS...... 37 COPYRIGHT IN THE NETHERLANDS ...... 37 OVERVIEW MUSIC RIGHTS ORGANISATIONS ...... 38 PERFORMING RIGHTS ORGANIZATIONS: BUMA/STEMRA...... 40 INTERVIEW WITH BUMA-STEMRA’S ROBERT BARUCH...... 41 SUPPORTING THE MUSIC SECTOR: THE ROLE OF BUMA CULTUUR...... 41 INTERVIEW WITH FRANK HELMINK – BUMA-STEMRA...... 41 NEIGHBOURING RIGHTS: INTERVIEW WITH MARKUS BOS (SENA)...... 42 REGISTERING WITH DUTCH SOCIETIES...... 44 FIGHTING PIRACY: THE ROLE OF BREIN...... 44

2 6 - MUSIC PROMOTION AND MEDIA...... 46 IMPACT OF MEDIA...... 46 MEDIA STRATEGY...... 46 TOP RADIO STATIONS ...... 46 THE ROLE OF RADIO: INTERVIEW WITH SANDRA JONGSTRA (RADIOMONITOR) ...... 47 INTERVIEW WITH RADIO PROGRAMMER: MENNO VISSER (3VOOR12)...... 48 INTERVIEW WITH TOP RADIO PLUGGER: INGMAR JAHN ...... 49 PRINT MEDIA...... 50 TELEVISION...... 51

7 - BUSINESS AND SHOWCASE EVENTS IN THE NETHERLANDS ...... 52 EVENT...... 52 EUROSONIC NOORDERSLAG...... 52

8 - MUSIC INDUSTRY ASSOCIATIONS AND ORGANIZATIONS ...... 52 9 - ADDITIONAL TOOLS AND RESOURCES...... 53 GOVERNMENT - CANADA EMBASSY AND CONSULATES IN THE NETHERLANDS...... 53 GOVERNMENT - THE NETHERLANDS CONSULATES + EMBASSY (CANADA)...... 53

10 – REFERENCES...... 54

Funding for this guide was provided in part by Global Affairs CanExport Associations. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Global Affairs CanExport Associations, the Government of Canada and its agencies are in no way bound by the recommendations contained in this document.

3 1 – THE NETHERLANDS AT A GLANCE OVERVIEW Netherlands is located in the northwest part of Europe . It is part of the European Union and the euro zone . The country is of the most densely populated in the world with a population of 17.3 million inhabitants living in a country slightly smaller than Nova Scotia (41,543 km2). The country is sometimes referred to as Holland, which in fact is a region on the western coast of the Netherlands .

Famous for its windmills, tulips and wooden shoes, the Netherlands is one of the most culturally diverse country in Europe with a huge tradition in supporting the arts in general and music in particular. As one of the oldest countries in Europe, it features some outstanding buildings and cultural artifacts spanning several centuries.

Netherlands Tourism describes the Dutch society as a whole as “very independent and modern” with many believing “in equality for all, yet focus on individuality more than community.”

The country is renowned for its sense of hospitality, which the Encyclopedia Britannica claims is “perhaps to some extent rooted in the spirit of humanism that was typical of the Dutch Republic of the 16th to the 18th century,” with figures such as Desiderius Erasmus in the 16th century and Hugo Grotius in the 17th century epitomizing that spirit.

Dutch people are very welcoming, especially in the main tourist areas. Working days tend to start early and end by 5pm. Netherlands Tourism describes Dutch citizens as “very straightforward and direct. They tell it like it is – honest and straight to the point. It’s not meant to be rude, it’s just their particular style.” The Tulip Festival

According to OECD statistics, the Dutch are more satisfied with their lives than the OECD average, as Dutch people gave it a 7.4 grade on average when asked to rate on a scale of 0 to 10 their general satisfaction with life (OECD’s average is 6 5). .

The Dutch transport system is one of the best in the world with a combination of road, rail, and air networks. But what will catch the eye of the visitor coming for the first time is the high density of people riding bicycles in the cities. Pedestrians coming from foreign countries can sometimes be overwhelmed with the constant flow of cycles coming around them and caution is required.

The country supports one of the best equipped network of concert venues of various sizes and is home to a diverse radio landscape, which program a wide range of music genres, from homegrown pop, dance and to international music. Local broadcasters are quick to pick new trends and artists and are of playing new music that is not available in the market.

Holland is widely recognized as a hub to reach out to Central and Northern Europe for music artists. Success in the country can be used to cross borders to neighboring countries .

The music sector in the Netherlands is very vibrant, with the three major companies and a dynamic independent music sector. IFPI-affiliated (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) trade organization NVPI (Nederlandse Vereniging van Producenten en Importeurs van beeld - en geluidsdragers or the Dutch Association

4 of Producers and Importers of image and sound carriers) represents most of the country’s record labels, music and video distributors as well as video game distributors. Over 80 indie labels are regrouped under the banner of STOMP (Stichting Onafhankelijke Muziek Producenten or the Dutch association of Independent Music Companies) which is also a member of NVPI.

Leading local artists like Marco Borsato (pop) and pack arenas in their native country. Borsato is the local artist with the longest spell at the top of the charts with his song ‘Dromen zijn bedrog’ ( Will Deceive) which spent 12 weeks atop the charts in 1994.

Over the years, Dutch artists have experienced steady successes outside of their own country, going back to 1970 and Shocking ’s ‘Venus’, Golden Earring’s ‘Radar Love’ in 1973 and ’s ‘Deeper Shade of Soul’ in 1989 .

One of the top acts in the 1970s and 1980s was Herman Brood & His Wild Romance, whose single ‘Saturday Night’ cracked Billboard’s 100 chart, peaking at 35. Brood is widely regarded as one of the most influential artists in the Dutch music community. He committed suicide in 2001 aged 54.

The country is now mostly known for its superstar DJs and EDM acts such as Martin Garrix, Afrojack, , and Tiesto. Dutch EDM dominance was a boon for indie labels such as Armada which build a dominion in the genre with signings such as co-founder van Buuren (with Maykel Piron and David Lewis), Corsten, and dozens of other acts .

Aside from EDM, the country’s artists cover multiple genres: Nederpop (, Anouk, Jan Smit, , Acda en De Munnik, Esmee Denters, Ilse de ), Nederhop or local hip hop (Dope DOD, Snelle, Frenna), classic rock (The Nits, Kane, Focus, Gruppo Sportivo), alternative (Urban Dance Squad, zZz), metal (, ), contemporary rock (Thomas Azier, Lukas Simonis), folk (Fungus, Irolt, Törf), and (Candy Dulfer, New Cool Collective).

Classical music benefits in the Netherlands from a good music teaching system, both at school and in conservatories. The music genre is popular with a large part of the population, with several cities hosting symphonic and classical orchestras, such as the Amsterdam Orchestra, the Philharmonic Orchestra and the Residentie Orchestra at . Caro Emerald Several generations of Canadian artists have been feted in the Netherlands over the years, from the 60s generation of Neil Young and Joni Mitchell to, more recently, Nickleback, , Drake, , , and Michael Bublé .

Due to the country’s appetite for new music, Canadian artists should consider plan to build a following in the Netherlands . This document should help them better understand the functioning of the market and build a strategy.

Tabea Hüberli

5 TRAVELLING IN THE COUNTRY GEOGRAPHY OF THE NETHERLANDS The currency of the Netherlands is the euro (EUR) . Most The country has borders with Belgium in the South and credit cards are accepted but not everywhere (using on the west and a coastline of 451 km with American Express can be challenging). However, ATMs the North Sea . are widely available. It is recommended to withdraw significant amounts of cash rather than small amounts The country is mostly made of lowland and reclaimed since banks will charge a fee per transaction. land, known as polders. A significant portion of the country, around 25%, is under the level of the sea . It has Inter-city travels are usually made by road or train. an intricate network of canals linking various parts of country has a very dense, efficient and reliable country, still used to this day to move around goods. train network that covers the main cities. It takes about two and a half hours to go from Amsterdam to the northern city of by train. Amsterdam and Rotterdam have direct train connections to , , Paris and , among other cities.

Road conditions and road safety are described as “excellent throughout the country” by the Canadian government, which advises to be cautious when driving since the Netherlands has one of the highest density of cyclists who have priority over other traffic. Drivers in the Netherlands have to be at least 18 years and need an international driving permit.

The country has a very dense network of hotels, especially in the largest cities, covering all budgets, from cheap options (under CA$50 a night) to luxury hotels (over CA$500). The country also offers a wide range of places to via AirBnb .

A wide choice of restaurants, for all types of budgets, can be found in most cities, from modern Dutch cuisine, relying heavily of local produce, to ethnic food (Indonesian with rijsttafel being a staple in Dutch food, Chinese, Japanese, Italian, etc) . There are also international and local fast food chains .

Dutch people diet relies heavily of dairy products – The Zuiderzee is an inland sea covering most of the the country produces several varieties of cheese, in northern part of the country. The region is protected from particular the world-famous Gouda from the city of tide variations by a 30 km-long dam, separating the the same name, but also the Edam and the Leyden – Zuiderzee from the North Sea. Several dams also protect and North Sea fishes such as herring or mackerel. the land from the sea in the South of the country.

Prices in the Netherlands are subject to a tax on value Dutch band’s The Nits had an ironic take on the added (VAT) that is added directly to the bills and to country’s geography when they named one their most the prices displayed in stores . A 12-15% tip is expected popular “In The Dutch Mountains” in the in restaurants (when not already added to the bill) . 1980s . The highest point in the country is Vaalserberg at 322 m (if you count the overseas territories, the NATIONAL HOLIDAYS highest point is Mount Scenery on the island of Saba The Dutch celebrate the holidays of Christian tradition in Dutch Antilles at 862 m). (Good Friday and Easter, Pentecost, Ascension Day and Christmas/St Stephens’ day). In addition, they The Netherlands also has overseas territories in celebrate King’s Day (April 27), Liberation Day (May Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao, Saba, Sint Eustatius, and 5), and New Year’s Day . Sint Maarten .

6 CLIMATE POLITICAL STRUCTURE OF THE COUNTRY Due to its geographical position, the Netherlands The Netherlands has been a constitutional monarchy benefits from a temperate climate, thanks in part since 1815 and Parliamentary democracy since to its proximity form the sea. Rainfall can happen 1848. The current monarch is currently 52-year-old throughout the year and clouds tend to pass over the King Willem-Alexander van Oranje-Nassau, who country regularly, but the winters are usually mild, acceded to the throne after his mother, Queen even if can be expected from time to time, and Beatrix, abdicated in 2013 after a reign of 33 years . summers are rarely hot. The King (or Queen) acts as the head of state of the Netherlands, but has mostly representative functions. According to Weather & Climate, the average temperature of the Netherlands is about 2 degrees Monarchs have no specific political power. The King Celsius (35 degrees Fahrenheit) in the month of usually appoints as Prime Minister the leader of the January, 19°C (66°F) in July, with an annual average party, or the coalition of parties, that has won the temperature of approximately 10°C (50°F). The majority at the House of Representatives. He also average annual rainfall in a year is 700 millimeters nominates all the mayors in the Netherlands. The (28in) . King is not involved in the day-to-day running of the country, which is the preserve of the government. POPULATION AND COUNTRY STATISTICS The Netherlands has a population of 17.3 million inhabitants . According to a 2018 census, 16 .28% of the population is aged 0-14 years, 12 .03% are 15-24 year-old, 39 .2% are aged 25-54 years: 39 .18% are aged 55-64 and 19.1% over 65. The median age is 42.7 years (41.6 years for males and 43.8 years for females). Close to 92% of the population lives in an urban environment.

The country’s various ethnicities include: Dutch (76.9%), EU (6.4%), Turkish (2.4%), Moroccan (2.3%), Indonesian (2.1%), German (2.1%), Surinamese (2%), Polish (1%), and other 4 .8%, according to 2018 estimates. The country had a history of welcoming immigrants over the years, from French Huguenots to Since the end of the domination of Dutch politics by Indonesians . the Christian Democrats in the 1990s, it is usually a coalition of parties of two or more parties that end The government is located in The Hague but the up running the country. The Prime Minister is the largest city and capital is Amsterdam, with 866,000 head of the government and leads a cabinet of 12 to inhabitants (2.4 million in the wide metropolitan 15 ministers (there can be ore junior ministers). The area). Other significant cities include Rotterdam, The current Prime Minister is Mark Rutte from the liberal Hague (half a million inhabitants), , , People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), and , Leiden, Groningen . has been in power since 2010 (re-elected in 2017) .

In 1798, all religions were pronounced equal before The Parliament consists of two chambers constituting the law. In 2020 the country is one of the most The Estates-General (Staten Generaal): A House of secularized in Europe, with only 6% of the population Representatives, the Tweede Kamer (Second Chamber), going to church. A survey from 2014 shows that and the Senate, the Eerste Kamer (First Chamber). 23.7% of the Dutch people claim to be affiliated with the Roman Catholic religion, 15.5% with the The Lower House consists of 150 members elected Protestant religion, mostly from the Calvinist form of every four years in direct national elections together Protestantism, 5.8% with “other” religions, 4.9% with with the provincial parliaments. The House votes Islam, while a majority (50.1%) claim no affiliation the laws (both presented by the government and by with any religion . members of the chamber), approves the budget and

7 has the right of submitting amendments, the right to countries in the Better Life Index.” The country ranks start its own inquires and the right of interpellation . top in work-life balance and above the average in jobs and earnings, housing, education and skills, subjective The 75 members of the Senate are elected by the well-being, social connections, environmental quality, provincial parliaments. Their prerogatives are personal security, civic engagement, and health status. to approve or reject all laws without the right of It ranks below the average in income and wealth. amendment. Once voted by both chambers, the bills are then signed into law by the King . The average household -adjusted disposable income per capita is US$29,333 a year. Life Both the government and the Parliament are located expectancy at birth in the Netherlands is 83 years in The Hague, which is also host to The International for women and 80 years for men. The average life Court of Justice and The International Criminal Court. expectancy is 82 years, two years higher than the OECD average of 80 years . The country is split in twelve administrative regions: Drenthe, Flevoland, Fryslan (Friesland), Gelderland, According to a recent study from the World Economic Groningen, Limburg, Noord-Brabant (North Brabant), Forum (WEF), the Netherlands now has the most Noord-Holland (), , Utrecht, competitive economy in Europe, ahead of Germany, Zeeland (Zealand), Zuid-Holland (South Holland) . and the UK . Only Singapore, the United The government appoints in each region a King’s States and Hong Kong are more competitive. Commissioner, who represents the government in the (weforum.org/reports/how-to-end-a-decade-of-lost- regions and reports to the Minister of Interior . productivity-growth)

Netherlands, alongside Belgium and Luxembourg, is Traditionally, Dutch people have been traders and a member of the Benelux economic union, which as entrepreneurs, forced to look outwards for economic a trading union was a precursor of the European development due to the small size of the country. In Economic Community, which later became the the 17th and 18th centuries it had built one of the European Union, of which the Netherlands is one of most powerful fleet of commercial vessels, bringing in the founding countries . Within the EU, the country is goods from Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Antilles part of the Schengen Area which allows citizens and to Europe . visitors to move around all the countries part of the area without any passport or customs check. The country has adopted a regulated mixed economy. Today’s economy is driven by big manufacturing The Netherlands is a member of a number of conglomerates such as electronics company Philips, international organizations such as the United oil and petrochemical companies, and services such Nations, UNESCO, World Intellectual Property as banking. Manufacturing industries employ about Organization (WIPO), the World Trade Organization a fifth of the country’s work force, while the services (WTO), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) industry employs 70% of the population and accounts and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and for two-thirds of the country’s Gross National Product . Development (OECD), among others. Reflecting its trading roots, the country is one of the world’s top 10 exporters . ECONOMIC OVERVIEW The Netherlands is one of the 20 largest economies in With 11.2 million visitors last year, tourism is also a large the world, with a GDP of US$1,028 billion in 2019, industry in the Netherlands. Amsterdam being one of the according to data from the World Bank, and a GDP most visited cities in Europe. Amsterdam is also one of per capita of US$59,321 in 2019, the sixth highest in the world’s key places for the diamond trade. the world, according to OECD data . The country has also a very low unemployment rate, with less than 3% Rotterdam, the country’s second largest city, has been of the population unemployed and 76% of people for centuries one of largest trading places in Europe . aged 15 to 64 in the Netherlands having a paid job. Today, alongside Europoort, it is the largest capacity ports in the world in terms of tonnage traded, with The OECD notes that the Netherlands “performs well massive shipments of oil, grains and containers going in many measures of well-being relative to most other through the harbor .

8 Although not a very big country, the Netherlands Sometimes, just walking in a Dutch city will expose has a vibrant agriculture, focusing mainly on dairy visitors to the richness of the country’s cultural production (milk, butter and cheese), as well as heritage . horticulture under glass, with an intensive production of flowers (such as tulips), fruits and vegetables. The LANGUAGES country also has an important fishery sector, both for The national language of the country is Dutch, similar self-consumption and for exports. to Flemish, spoken south of the border in Belgium. In the northern region of Friesland, about half a million The country tends to import its energy, such as coal people speak Friesian. Overall, most inhabitants and oil, but is also a producer of natural gas, 75% of speak English, even at a young age, a practice helped which is exported, mostly to neighboring countries. by the fact that US and British TV shows broadcast in Overall, the European Union is the main trading the Netherlands are subtitled and not dubbed . partner of the Netherlands . AVERAGE COSTS FOR EVERYDAY ITEMS ART AND HISTORICAL HIGHLIGHTS Expatistan provides undated listings of cost of items in The country has a long history of promoting the Netherlands . and supporting culture and the arts and a vast expatistan.com/cost-of-living/country/netherlands ’s a sample of the items they track.

Food Basic lunchtime menu (+ a drink) ...... €14 Meal in fast food restaurant ...... €8 500 gr (1 lb.) of boneless chicken breast ...... €4 .42 1 liter (1 qt.) of whole fat milk ...... €1 .17 12 eggs, large ...... €3 .48 1 kg (2 lb.) of tomatoes ...... €2 .42 500 gr (16 oz .) of local cheese ...... €6 1 kg (2 lb.) of apples ...... €2 .45 1 kg (2 lb.) of potatoes ...... €2 .21 0.5 l (16 oz) domestic beer in the supermarket . . . . €1 .41 1 bottle of red table wine, good quality ...... €8 2 liters of coca-cola ...... €2 .51 Van Gogh Museum Bread for 2 people for 1 day ...... €1 .31 cultural heritage . The country is renowned for its groundbreaking paintings from the Dutch Golden Age Transportation with the likes of , Vermeer, Hals, among 1 liter (1/4 gallon) of gas ...... €1 .67 others . Monthly ticket public transport ...... €96

Amsterdam is host to some of the most visited Personal Care museums, starting with the Van Gogh Museum, which Cold medicine for 6 days (Tylenol, etc) ...... €4 .02 has the largest collection of paintings form Vincent 1 box of antibiotics (12 doses) ...... €15 van Gogh but also from other painters from the same Short visit to private doctor (15 minutes) ...... €26 period, the Rijksmuseum, dedicated to art and history, 1 box of 32 tampons (Tampax, ob, ...) ...... €3 .49 and the Anne Frank House, visited each year by over Deodorant, roll-on (50ml ~ 1.5 oz.) ...... €3 .53 1 million people. Hair shampoo 2-in-1 (400 ml ~ 12 oz.) ...... €3 .78 4 rolls of toilet paper ...... €1 .80 Other cities also have museums worth visiting: Zaanse Tube of toothpaste ...... €2 .24 Schans in Zaandam presents a collection of preserved Standard men’s haircut ...... €26 windmills, Utrecht hosts the Railway Museum, The Hague’s Mauritshuis features collections of painting from the Dutch Golden Age, the Groninger Museum focuses on modern art and was host to the exhibition a few years ago .

9 Entertainment Basic dinner out for two in neighborhood pub ...... €42 Cost of Living – Ranking in Netherlands (top cities by Dinner for two at an Italian restaurant ...... €61 data quality) 2 tickets to the movies ...... €22 2 tickets to the theater (best seats) ...... €113 Ranking City Price Index 1 cocktail drink in downtown club ...... €9 1st Amsterdam 196 Cappuccino in expat area of the city ...... €3 .10 2nd The Hague 173 1 beer in neighborhood pub (500ml or 1pt.) . . . . . €4 .81 3rd Maastricht 173 4th Rotterdam 172 Various 5th Nijmegen 162 Internet 8 mbps (1 month) ...... €30 6th Eindhoven 159 40” flat screen tv ...... €474 7th 155 Laundry detergent (3 l. ~ 100 oz.) ...... €8 8th Groningen 147 Hourly rate for cleaning help ...... €15 1 min. of prepaid mobile tariff (no discount) ...... €0 .10 (Source: Expatistan; The Price Index value is calculated by 1 month of gym membership ...... €40 assigning a value of 100 to a central reference city () and by 1 package of Marlboro cigarettes ...... €8 comparing each city’s cost of living to the cost of living in Prague.)

AIRPORTS AND AIRLINES The country’s most important airport is Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport (in Dutch: Luchthaven Schiphol), one of the biggest transport hubs in Europe: it’s the third busiest airport in Europe with over 70 million passengers yearly.

It is operated by Royal Schiphol Group, a Dutch company with the State of the Netherlands as its main shareholder (69.77%). France’s Aéroports de Paris owns an 8% share in the company. Revenues in 2018 reached €1 .5 billion .

Royal Schiphol Group is also operator of the Rotterdam-The Hague Airport, Lelystad Airport and Eindhoven Airport .

Schiphol was first built as a military base in 2016, Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport and later converted as a civil airport after World War I . Over the years, the airport was expanded to its current size with no less than six runways .

The airport functions with a single terminal split into three sections, named Hall 1, Hall 2 and Hall 3.

The country’s main airline company is KLM, which uses Schiphol as its primary hub. KLM carried 35 million passengers to 145 different destinations around the world in 2018. KLM is owned by a venture company regrouping KLM and Air France .

Most international airlines fly to and from Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport, including Air Canada. Schiphol airport has regular flight to/from Canada’s main cities and services most of Europe’s cities. Travelers in transit at Amsterdam are advised to account for long commutes between the airport’s three terminals.

The airport is located less than 10 km from the city of Amsterdam and is accessible by train or car. The airport hosts a major train station with connections to Amsterdam, Rotterdam and all the main cities in the country.

10 Schiphol web site recommends passengers to arrive 3 hours before the fight departure for a flight to a destination outside Europe, or 2 hours to a destination within Europe .

Like other airports, Schiphol has short term and long-term parking. Short term parking (P1) is ideal for short journeys, less than 48 hours. It is recommended to book online but it is not necessary. The daily fee is €40, but in case you exceed 48 hours at P1, the charge will be of €100 per day. It is just a few minutes’ walk from the Arrivals and Departure terminal.

Long term parking (P3) is recommended if traveling more than three days. The parking is easily accessible from the motorway. A free Express leaves every ten minutes to the Departures terminal for a 5-minute trip. Fees at P3 are set at €40 for the first 24 hours, €67.50 for 48 hours, and then each additional day will cost €7.50.

The free Express Bus leaves every 10-minutes to and from P3, 24 hours a day. It takes 5 minutes to reach the terminals.

With some 2 million passengers each year, Rotterdam-The Hague Airport is the third largest airport in the country, serving the cities of The Hague and Rotterdam, to which it is connected by train. It mostly serves other Europeans cities .

Eindhoven Airport, near the city of Eindhoven in the North Brabant region, is the county’s second largest airport, based on the number of passengers (6.2 million in 2018). It is used both by civilian aircrafts and the military.

Lelystad Airport near the city of the same name is the biggest general aviation airport in the Netherlands, accommodating business flights, training flights, sightseeing flights, charter flights, aircraft maintenance repair & overhaul as well as many other aviation-related activities. Located about 70 km away from Amsterdam, it attracts over 150,000 visitors annually .

Schiphol’s web site: schiphol .nl/en/

TRAINS The train network, operated by NS, links most of the country’s cities (ns.nl/en/travel-information). A fast train links Rotterdam to Amsterdam (with stopovers at Schiphol Airport) in 40 minutes. Most trains have first and second class . Free wireless connection is usually available on the trains .

If you are bound to make several travels by train, metro or bus in the country it is worth getting an OV- chipkaart, an electronic traveling card for public transport in the Netherlands, which also allows to keep track of the trips made by train.

NS web site is available in English and is easy to navigate: ns .nl/en

METRO, BUSES AND TRAMS Each of the main cities have a very good network of buses and, sometimes, trams, which allow people to connect without using their cars .

Amsterdam has four metro lines that cover a large part of the city with 52 stations, as well as trams and buses.

Rotterdam’s public transport system is handled by the RET, or the Rotterdam Transport company, covering buses,

11 trams and metro. Fares are usually pre-paid on to and OV chip card (see above).

The Hague has a network of about 30 buses and tram routes.

Taxis operate in most cities and could be quite costly, especially during the congested hours. Taxi’s set fares are the same across the country.

TRAVELLING TO THE NETHERLANDS Visitors traveling to the Netherlands need to have a valid passport . For tourists, business professionals and students, no visa is required for stays up to 90 days . If you plan to stay longer, please contact the Dutch consulate nearest to your home base.

While traveling in the Netherlands, visitors over the age of 14 are expected to carry valid identification at all times, such as passports, Dutch residence permits, or driver’s licenses issued in the Netherlands or elsewhere in the European Union and the European Economic Area.

The country has a reputation of safety and be welcoming to visitors. Most people speak English and will likely respond to questions in English .

Canada’s government web site indicates that petty crime, such as pickpocketing and bag snatching, is happening in the larger cities, particularly in Amsterdam, with tourists being the primary targets and cautions to “be vigilant at all times and pay attention to your surroundings.”

Travelers carrying more than €10,000 or the equivalent in other currencies (in cash, cheque, money order, traveller’s cheque or any other convertible asset) must make a declaration to customs upon their entry or exit to the European Union . This does not apply for people traveling within the European Union or in transit to a non-EU country .

The Netherlands is part of the Schengen area agreement. Once Canadian citizens enter one of the countries from the Schengen area they do not need a visa for travel to countries within the Schengen area. However, visa-free travel only applies to stays of up to 90 days in any 180-day period .

CONNECTIVITY The country counts over 20 million subscriptions to mobile phone services. The phone networks are highly developed and well maintained and has one of the highest fixed broadband penetration rates in the world.

Travelers with international plans can use the local networks and receive/send calls and text messages, depending on their plans with their operator .

12 2 - THE DUTCH RECORDED MUSIC MARKET HISTORY AND CURRENT STATE The Dutch music market has usually been among the world’s top ten, showing the appetite for music from a country with 17 million inhabitants.

The Netherlands played a key role in the development of the CD, as Philips, the Dutch electronics manufacturer co-owned the paten for the format, and Holland was also one of the first countries to have its own CD plant.

Philips, based in Eindhoven, also owned PolyGram, the music major that became market leader through the ambitious acquisitions of Island Records, A&M Records and Motown. Philips’ music division was established when it acquired in 1942 from a local entrepreneur Hollandsche Decca Distributie (HDD), which had an exclusive manufacturing and distribution agreement with London’s Decca label.

Philips set up in 1962 a more subsequent record company as a joint venture with Germany’s Siemens, which brought to the fold classical label Deutsche Grammophon and pop label Polydor. It was then named Grammophon-Philips Group and became PolyGram in 1972.

The ownership of PolyGram was a key factor in Philips’ ability to successfully launch the CD in the early 1980s by having access to some of the most popular acts of . The marketing campaign for ’ ‘Brothers in Arms’ in 1985 as the poster for the new CD format was groundbreaking and established the CD as a mass-market product. The album became the first to exceed sales over one million copies in the CD format.

In May 1998, Philips sold PolyGram to Canadian company Seagram, which eventually named the company , now the largest music company in the world and owned by French conglomerate Vivendi .

The CD market in the Netherlands was one of the most dynamics in the world with consumers quick to embrace the new format and retailer making room for CDs. However, after the CD boom that peaked in 2001, like all the other European countries, the Netherlands had to face the market downturn that followed the arrival of peer-to-peer service such as Napster .

After years of decline, the market has now stabilized and is experiencing renewed growth thanks to music streaming services. Statista forecasts that the Dutch music market will grow at an annual growth rate of 4.8% between 2019 and 2023 .

RECORDED MUSIC MARKET The three music majors (Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group) operate in the Netherlands, alongside independent labels .

Indie labels are represented by STOMP, which claims to regroup some 95% of the country’s indies. They are also represented by NVPI, a trade organization which regroups majors and indie labels, and also represents the film and the interactive industries .

In 2018, the market grew 5.5% year-on-year to €186.6 million (CA$285.2m), according to trade body NVPI. With revenues of €131.4 million, streaming accounted for 71.5% of the total, up from 63.7% in 2017. Sales of physical product fell 17.1% to €45.4 million from €54.8 million, with vinyl accounting for €15.6 million.

13 In 2019, recorded music revenues grew to €206.8m (CA$310m), up 13.2% year-on-year, according to NVPI. Streaming revenues were up 23% to €161.7m and accounted for 78.2% of total revenues, whereas all other formats posted a decline year-on-year, with downloads plunging 21.3% and CDs by 15.7%. NVPI said 2019’s figures were the “strongest growth of the Dutch market in five years.”

The adoption of streaming has accelerated in the last few years . In 2012, digital only accounted for 27% of total revenues, jumping to close to 80% in 2019 .

It is quite a turnaround compared to the early to mid-2010s when the country was hurt by online piracy . IFPI recognized in 2012 that “piracy levels were historically high, fueled partly by the government’s reluctance to declare that downloading from an illegal source was itself illegal.”

But a series of changes and a more pro-active policy in tackling piracy (see interview with anti-piracy outfit BREIN), has led to some significant successes by the music industry against services such as The Pirate Bay, which was in the early 2010s “the biggest unlicensed service in the Netherlands,” according to IFPI, when the country counted over 6.6 million Dutch internet users were using unlicensed services.

Following court cases, The Pirate Bay was eventually blocked by two ISPs, which led to a dramatic drop in illegal consumption of music.

It is estimated that over 3 million Dutch people have a subscription to a streaming service, and the share is poised to grow in the next couple of years. Spotify is the most popular streaming service in the country.

According to independent label’s agency Merlin, the number of streams monitored by the organization in the Netherlands has increased by 85.4% since January 2017, showing a growing acceptance of streaming in the market.

Trade organization NVPI has agreements with two different chart suppliers in the Netherlands: - Stichting Nederlandse Top 40, which provides the weekly singles chart Dutch Top 40, combining physical sales, downloads and radio . The weekly Top 40 singles chart is aired on radio commercial radio station Q Music on Fridays; - and consumer research company Gfk, which compiles several weekly charts (Album Top 100, Single Top 100, Music DVD Top 30, among others). Gfk’s Single Top 100 combines physical sales, downloads and streaming data, as does the Album Top 100 (formerly known as Mega Album Top 100).

DIGITAL MUSIC SERVICES IN THE NETHERLANDS Most of the world’s main streaming services operate in the Netherlands. Spotify is the market leader. Other services include: Deezer, Apple Music, Tidal, Google Play Music, Napster, Juke, and YouTube Music.

MUSIC DISTRIBUTION IN THE NETHERLAND All three majors provide distribution in the country as do some indie distributors such as [PIAS], which is based in Brussels, and acquired local distributor Rough Trade Distribution in 2013 . pias.com/network/holland

Companies like Bertus, started as a record shop in 1971, provides a one-stop wholesale and distribution solution for physical distribution. Bertus offers clients a Marketing and Promotion department reaching out to magazines, newspapers, radio, TV, websites, social media and mailings. bertus.com/index.php?lang=en

14 There are also more specialized outlets like Clone Distribution, that works in the field of specialist , soundtracks, jazz, , (italo) disco and indie electronix. Based in Rotterdam, it also operates a record store and a vending portal . clonedistribution.com/info

One of the leading digital distributor and services company in the Netherlands is FUGA, which started as a hub for dance and and has evolved into a full-service operator. FUGA was acquired at the start of 2020 by US independent music company Downtown, via its affiliate VLA (CD Baby). (Read the interview below with FUGA’s Dave Driessen) fuga.com

Another digital distribution option is The Source, an independent technology and music business services company based in the Netherlands, with offices in the UK, and Eastern Europe. the-source.eu/home/distribution

INDIE LABELS: INTERVIEW WITH KEES VEN WEIJEN (STOMP) The Netherlands has a diverse and dynamic independent music scene, with dozens of labels producing music in all music genres, from local hip hop to EDM, world music, classical, etc.

Most indie labels are regrouped in STOMP (Stichting Onafhankelijke Muziek Producenten), a trade organization chaired by Kees van Weijen, who is also President of European indies’ body IMPALA and board member of WIN (Worldwide Independent Network), the global trade body for independent companies.

He has been working in the music sector since 1974 and has worked for both major companies (, MCA and Polydor) and indie labels ([PIAS] Rough Trade Distribution). Here, he talks about the power of indies in the Netherlands .

Indie labels represent, depending on the format, 25% (streaming) to 35% (CDs) of the Dutch music market, with some 30% for vinyl, according to stats from Gfk and STOMP .

What’s STOMP? STOMP is an organization representing independent music companies in the Netherlands. We are part of the IFPI- affiliated organization NVPI, which represents the major companies and the indies. We have the same interests but we differ in our goals on 5%. A lot of problems that we have as indies is that we were not considered big enough to make deals with digital platforms, but that problem has been solved with Merlin, which negotiates with digital services on behalf of indie labels . Holland is Merlin’s fourth largest country in terms of membership and we represent 21% of Merlin’s earnings, the fourth country for earnings . At a recent presentation, Merlin outgoing CEO Charles Caldas told us that revenues reported by Merlin members based in the Netherlands has increased by almost 660% since 2014. This is something we are quite proud of. Overall, indies represent some 39% of copyright content in the world. We are not that small and we are fighting for fair deals and a level playing field.

15 How many members do you have? At the end of 2019, we had 85 members, which would not seem to be a lot but we represent all the key labels, including Armada, and many smaller labels. Holland’s music scene is so diverse in all kind of genres, and our members are active in all music genres. We have been growing our membership every year. My goal to have 100 members by the end of the year.

How would you describe the Dutch market? The Dutch market always has been a gateway to Europe, mostly of because our open radio system, which has helped expose a lot of new artists from around the world. Now, radio stations are much more formatted than before, but there is still space for new music and indie music. Often DJs pick up new tracks even before they might be released in the market, so you have a lot of new music played on the radio. For indie music, Radio 3FM has been very influential in promoting not only Dutch indies but indies in general. Regrettably, the station has lost a lot of market share in the past few years, but is still influential. There is a lot of alternative music produced in the Netherlands, with six of seven big indies that are active in the field like [PIAS] Rough rade,T which I used to co-own. Hip hop very popular and a lot of artists are with very small labels, often neglected by the media. They usually start in a garage or an attic and have a DIY mentality. But the genre is growing. We also have a lot of EDM music with DJs creating their own labels. It’s a very dynamic scene and a healthy market.

How has is Dutch market doing with regards to streaming? There is a very high penetration of streaming here. It is estimated that almost 50% of internet users in the Netherlands have a Spotify account. So the market is developing quite well. Like elsewhere we have suffered a drop in CD sales and downloads are losing ground but revenues from streaming are up. We have experienced something like a 25% growth in revenues from streaming between 2018 and 2019, when at the same time CD sales were down 13% and downloads down 18% [according to figures from research and marketing company gfk covering the period from October 2018 to October 2019].

Is there still a physical market and a network of retailers? , CD sales might be going down and still represent 36% of the industry’s total revenues, but vinyl is up. Overall, according to Gfk, revenues from vinyl grew 17% year on year to over €15 million. Record store day was extremely successful. However, if you look at the top 15 best-selling artists in vinyl, it’s mostly catalogue international artists from major companies. Indies do well at retail, even with CDs, although they do not have the large catalogues that majors have. Overall, if I look at the Top 100 , indies are performing quite well, with over one-fifth of all singles and albums in the charts from indie labels.

What would you advise Canadian artists and labels to do if they want to break the Dutch market? Do your homework! This is so important. Try to find a label and a good agent and take it from there. Prepare yourself well. The Dutch market is very open to new music and we had some successes here with Canadian artists. We should be able to welcome more Canadians. It’s expensive to get bands to travel, so having subsidies to promote Canadian artists abroad is a good thing. If you try to break the European market, the Netherlands is a good way to start. But you need an agent. If a Canadian act plans to come to Holland and Europe, make sure that you are not planning just one visit. Come here once and then build up by coming back – maybe start with a few concerts and come back to do some festivals. Hence the importance of the agent. We are extremely jealous – in positive sense – about the situation in Canada compare to here. Canadians have access to subsidies for export and production and so on. In Holland, our export office has a relatively limited budget .

16 DUTCH MUSIC EXPORT: INTERVIEW WITH MARCEL ALBERS Marcel Albers is a busy man! He is the CEO of M.A..S. Label Group, which he co-founded with Rose Spearman. Operating from Amsterdam and Austin, Texas USA the label, management and publishing company has a roster of artists that includes Roosbeef, Jaimee Harris, Nine Beats Collective, Ten Times A Million, Joia and Leonie Maijer, among others. He is a Board Member of the Dutch Live Entertainment Production Awards, and he is also coordinator of the Dutch Music Export office.

The Dutch Music Export is an initiative by Fonds PodiumKunsten, Buma Cultuur and Stichting Popcoalitie, to bolster the international position of Dutch on the world stage. Dutch Music Export supports Dutch music industry professionals and artists in their efforts to develop a business outside of the country. DME works artists and DJs in multiple genres, from pop music to EDM.

Marcel Albers explains here what DME does and how Canadian artists can access the Dutch market.

Why did you accept to oversee Dutch Music Export? DME started in January 2017. At the time, I didn’t have the time to do that and when I was asked to I said ‘beware I have my own company’. This is important since we are under government supervision and responsible for grants and funding. I work with local and international artists. I was chair of the Music Managers Forum Netherlands [from 2010 to 2017] and as such I went to the government to ask for money. I was told that there aren’t that many people here with my international experience and now that we have secured the funding, the music sector needed people like me to run the organization, so I took the job. I have been running record labels for past 30 years so that should benefit the Dutch music industry. When it’s about one of my artists, I the room.

What did you focus on at DME? We started with data. The data we have in Holland about the past 15 years of export was not really significant, but by analyzing 15 years of data, I knew we could do better. We had to change the way we did things. We had to look into income streams, such as publishing, synchronization, promotion, etc, not just sending artists abroad. If we are convinced that our talent here is great, but not as successful as we are hoping, maybe we have to put more attention into improving the skills of professional people around the artists and change policy.

How did it translate in real terms? For example, during Indie Week in New , we did a three-day program with a series of round tables with professionals from Holland and the US to talk about specific topics: labels, publicity, venues and bookers, synch, and so on. And then we went on field trips, such as going to Spotify or visiting a venue. eW are not simply sending artists around the world and organize parties. We look at how people do business. It’s very important. We are very focused on what happens in America, and we see it as the counterpoint for acquiring knowledge. We now have somebody in America collecting the latest news and sharing it with Dutch professionals. In general, we try to stay connected with the latest development in our focus territories.

How is it going on now? We do a lot. We attend a lot of professional events such as our own conferences – Eurosonic and Amsterdam Dance Event –, visit South by South West, Musexpo, etc. If want to have a healthy export policy, inform your minister of culture and apply for subsidies, we need data to do so in order to back up the story. We need data to build our story but also need data to offer that to Dutch music professionals. Once you know what you want to do, it’s necessary to be aware of the culture of the people you deal with in order to have a chance . We are a very small territory, so if you want to achieve something you need to go out and rely on exports.

17 How important are programs like Music Moves Europe, from the European Commission? Music Moves Europe is very important, especially because it has programs that are across the board. The most important thing for local companies in Europe is not use to money to get bigger but to work together. We need to form new joint ventures and if we can do that within Europe, we can do that with other countries. And then easier to go to the US after that. I strongly believe there is a role for export offices to work together. Of course, we are all competitors but we also realize that if want to be in the Champion’s League, we have to work together or we won’t survive .

How many people work for Dutch Music Export, and what is your budget? You have to see that in 2016, when we were looking for more money to fund export initiatives we went to everybody such as the Performing Arts Fund and to the Ministry of Culture. We were told that we could get money but they wanted to make sure that all the sector was speaking with one voice. In order to do that, we formed the Pop Coalition, which is responsible for the policy of Dutch Music Export and to control facts and figures. Now we have two main sources of funding with Buma Cultuur and the Ministry of Culture which both put half a million euros on the table, plus extra funding for travels, etc. Basically, we are dealing with a budget of one million euros. We use the back office of Buma Cultuur to take care of all administrative tasks. So there’s myself, three part time people and the staff at Buma Cultuur, including director Frank Helmink.

What was the consensus regarding the policy of the organization? We work on plan covering the time frame of 2016-2020. One third of the budget is spent to supporting professionals attending international showcases such as Musexpo, Reeperbahn, the Great Escape, MaMA, BIME, etc. That’s one third of our budget. Another third goes to co-funding international marketing campaigns, and of last third, 10% goes to cover overhead cost and rest is spent in education, training, informing people and on the revised trade mission to take professionals from other countries and bring them to the Netherlands.

How do you pick artists? It’s very easy because we are not supposed to be the music police for Holland. If an artist registers for South By and is accepted or is picked by a festival, or officially invited to attend an event, we will help by picking up flights, etc. In addition, since 2019, artists and/or their management have to deliver a plan. That was not the case in the early days . Now, we need a decent plan as to why they want to go, which local partners they have, etc. If there is no plan, they can still go but we will not support them. If you want to do business outside of your own territory, you need a plan .

Any advice you’d give to Canadians who want to break the Dutch market? The best advice I could give is to do the same as what we try to do, which is not sending 25 artists here hoping they will become world famous in Holland. But I still believe that you can use Holland as the gateway to the rest of Europe. If I lived in Canada, which is a huge country, I’d probably be looking at Germany, which is the third largest music market in the world, I’d probably find a way to get some physical products out there, but it is expensive to promote in Germany. So I’d probably look at Holland. We have probably the best club scene in Europe, great agents and promoters, booking agents, etc. For touring artists, Holland is heaven on earth. Everybody here is willing to work with artists from Canada and we like the way they play. We love music and culture from other territories, and we are not such an expensive place. Use the Netherlands as the best test market, but before doing anything, talk to fellow managers and labels and do your homework.

Would Dutch radio be supporting of Canadian artists? Holland has a very open radio scene but also a limited one. For front line artists, there’s Radio 3 and on the commercial side Q Music. If you can manage to get to radio in Holland, it has an impact. It’s worth hiring a radio plugger and a press agent to test the market.

Is language an issue? Everybody here speaks English. We do not dub foreign TV shows and we have them in English. Kids learn English from an early age, at school and watching TV. We use a lot of English words in our own language. As you know, our language is spoken here, in half of Belgium, Surinam and with some variations in South Africa. No one else in the rest of the world speaks Dutch, so we should not expect that someone would come to our territory and speak Dutch.

18 DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION: INTERVIEW WITH DAVE DRIESSEN (FUGA) Launched in Amsterdam in 2006, FUGA has become one of the world’s most active and efficient music distribution platform, B2B music technology and services company, offering a wide range of services. Initially focusing of Dutch dance music scene, FUGA expanded its reach to other type of music genres.

FUGA operates in two different ways: clients can use the platform to distribute content via FUGA’s deals with DSPs or use its technology to deliver content through deals directly made by the clients. “You are in control,” is the motto of the company. The system can be operated via the web, remotely controlled through an API or custom-branded.

FUGA offers a complete content management system operational throughout the digital supply chain: upload and create releases, re- compile catalog, create audio/video bundles, set tracks to pre-order, and timed-release dates. The company can also provide digital marketing expertise, YouTube monetization, as well as rights management, royalty accounting, neighboring rights collections, and so on .

Its distribution network counts some 260 platforms worldwide, including YouTube, Facebook, Tencent and TikTok. In 2019, FUGA employed over 100 people . It has over 500 clients, covering 50 countries and hosting 5 million tracks. Clients include distributors and aggregators, artist managers and labels, such as Epitaph Records, Ultra, Curb, Mom + Pop, mTheory and Domino.

In January 2020, Downtown Music Holdings’ subsidiary, AVL Digital Group, acquired FUGA, which will now operate alongside CD Baby and other entities, but continue to function as a stand-alone operation . Headquartered in Amsterdam, FUGA also operates out of New York, London, Milan and Seoul.

New York-based FUGA Director of Sales and Client Services Dave Driessen explains how the company services its clients .

What’s FUGA’s line of business? FUGA was founded in 2006 in Amsterdam. I’ve been with the company since 2009. We were basically a start- up around the time that iTunes started and became disruptive. Digital music was becoming a serious thing and our idea was to create a business management system for record labels so they could independently manage digital distribution without been locked up in classical distribution schemes.

When we launched, we were solely a technical provider that provided software and services to clients that had direct contacts with online stores. We were like a warehouse storing CDs, and sending to stores, except that we were doing that digitally. We realized quickly that as a B2B company our clients needed to get content out very fast, and not have any bottleneck. That kind of system was particularly needed by electronic labels like Armada that wanted to deliver music on Thursday night and get to do promo immediately. They were also creating remixes and pushing stuff constantly.

Our system was strongly adopted by the electronic scene. That’s how we started and although we were based in the Netherlands, we always had the international market in mind. For example, English was always the language of the company. Dance music companies are very international, so very quickly we got a strong UK base and a solid US base .

19 Are you still operating the same way today? Over time, we bought various technical platforms. We are different than aggregators in that clients can do direct deliveries themselves, but then some came to us saying that they did not have direct deals or did not want to administer directly small DSPs, and asked us, since we had deals and relationships in place, if we would consider doing it for them. So our business evolved into some distribution model. We offered to do aggregation, we collect money, we distribute royalties, we do accounting and then, on top of that, we have built a well-crafted marketing team. We are not just a tech company, we have also become a service company.

Has your core clientele changed? Absolutely. That was because of the market we were in initially. We are not a genre-focused company. We grew from 5000 tracks to 5 or 6 million and we’ve worked with Harmonia Mundi, for example, to build a classical music dashboard. We work with classical, rock, punk labels. We are genre-agnostic but we go where the growth of the market is.

Any Canadian labels or artist among your clients? We have about ten Canadian labels as clients. We are very a la carte and do specific distribution, where clients need help .

Any tips for a Canadian label or artist that wants to access the Dutch market? It really depends on your set up. If you have a strong marketing focus, you can potentially access that by controlling your rights as an independent and then managing your touring strategy and DSP strategy the same way you manage it in Canada or in the US. If you don’t have that, try to find local partners like a local PR firm and then think about whether licensing is interesting. It depends on the genre and what you want to achieve.

Are people in the Netherland interested in new music from anywhere? It is an extremely international country: Being a small country has always made it very open to outside influences. And people are not dogmatic or parochial when it comes to music. That’s the local music culture. They are open and practical, and that is reflected in the adoption of the digital revolution. ouY have a high streaming adoption in the Netherlands.

How are Dutch people in business? There are very straight and great to do business with because they are just to the point honest and also very welcoming. The Dutch are very good at dealing with issues at hand, talk about the issue and moving on to the next issue. In their culture, it is important for everyone to have an opinion but it is very collaborative too. The fact that they had to pump the water off the sea required collaborative action and that is still reflected today.

20 TOP ARTISTS IN 2019 IN THE NETHERLANDS

SALES CHART ANALYSIS – TOP SELLERS 2019 The Dutch public has shown in 2019 interest for both domestic acts and international stars. Five of the top 10 songs bought or streamed were in Dutch, with Dutch DJ and producer trio Kriss Kross Amsterdam topping the chart with his Spinnin’ release ‘Hij Is Van Mij’, which beat Lil Nas X as the country’s top seller. Other Dutch artists in the Top 10 include superstar Marco Borsato with Armin van Buuren and Davina Michelle, YouTuber Davina Michelle on her own, rapper Snelle and pop singer Duncan Laurence .

Although these hits rarely cross borders, except to neighboring Flanders, the top 10 of the year is a testimony to the strength of domestic repertoire in local language.

Best-selling singles in the Netherlands in 2019

(Source: Gfk)

Best-selling Albums in the Netherlands in 2019 The year-end Top 10 albums listing sees six positions in the Top 10 going to local acts. Topping the charts is Dutch rapper Frenna with ‘Francis’, released by hip hop label Top Notch . Altogether, aside from Frenna, four other domestic rap acts dominated the Dutch charts in 2019: rapper Snelle comes in at No.4 for his Roq ’Rolla release ‘Beet Je Bij Beet Je’ and at 9 for another album; Franco-Dutch rapper Boef, comes in at No.6; another Top Notch artists, actor and rapper Lil Kleine, is at No.8; and yet another rapper, Dopebwoy, takes the tenth spot.

Billie Eilish, , with two albums, and Post Malone are the only international acts in the Top 10. Like for singles, this confirms the rise of Netherlands as a strong market for local rap, similar to what happened in France a few years back. International acts have a more difficult task to top the charts with such a buoyant domestic scene.

Frenna

21 (Source: Gfk)

RADIO CHART ANALYSIS – MOST PLAYED TRACKS 2019 The most played tracks on radio do not reflect the best-selling singles. Instead, the listing, compiled by Radiomonitor shows that International acts remained favored by radio programmers and the public. Mark Ronson, Pink, Ava Max, Duncan Laurence, Ed Sheeran, Panic At The Disco, , are among the international acts dominating the airwaves in the Netherlands in 2019 .

Songs by local acts Duncan Laurence, Nielson, Davina Michelle and Susan & Freek were among the most played in 2019.

During the year, the most played tracks by Canadian artists were dominated by Shawn Mendes who managed to place seven songs in the Top 20 most played tracks of 2019 by Canadian artists, including the most played track with ‘Señorita’, his duet with . On his own, Mendes accounts for 25% of all airplay by Canadian artists in the Netherlands in 2019 .

Other Canadian acts getting airplay in the Netherlands are and Michael Bublé, each with about a 10% market share of Canadian airplay, followed by EDM act Loud Luxury, released locally on Armada, Alessia Cara, Justin Bieber, Alanis Morissette, Daniel Powter and .

22 Top 20 radio airplay chart – Jan 1 – Dec 8 2019 (Source: Radiomonitor)

23 Top 20 radio airplay chart – Jan 1 – Dec 8 2019 (Canadian artists only) (Source: Radiomonitor)

LIST: STOMP MEMBERS

[PIAS] Rough Trade Distribution Challenge Records International Excelsior Recordings 2 Dutch Channel Classics Records Epitaph Europe 8ball Music Chillhop Music Fields of Roses Music AffectSounds Cloud 9 Music Flow Records Afreaka Records CNR Entertainment Grandmono Records Coast to Coast Heroic Artifex11 Convinced Hit4Us Be Yourself Music Cornelis Music Hollandsche School Beterentertainment / Doggy CTM Holliwood Records Records CYB3RPVNK Productions Jannes Produkties Bitbird De Haske Hal Leonard Kassem Touzani De Muziekfabriek KRUGANG BMG Talpa Music Dee 2 Records LAB Music BOEP Django Music & Publishing Lange Frans BV Brothers United Records Dox Records Lessing Holding Casual Solution El Chapo Productions/Music Liedjes

24 Marista Music Company Pure Imagination Records V2 Records Mascot Provogue Purple Eye Entertainment Van Hoevelaak Records Mirasound Media Services QuatroVision Visco Muziek- en Modestus Records Red Bullet Reclameproducties Music & Words (Blue Kapibara) Rotterdam Airlines Vosound Records Neerlands Dope Skarster Music Investment Walboomers Music News Records Sonic Rendezvous DCM WedgeView Nits Striker Recordings White Villa International NRGY Music Studio 100 Wilde Westen Records Paradox / PAN Records Suburban Xplo Music Pentatone Music Telstar Grammofoonplatenmij. ZenneZ Records Play It Again Sam The Source Zonamo Entertainment PM Recordings Umoja Music ZYX Music Protocol Recordings Use Me Music

LIST: NVPI’S BOARD NVPI Audio Board The NVPI Audio Board consists of six people, with representatives from all three major music companies have a seat and the other half of the board consisting of representatives of independent labels and distributors . Chairman: Kees van der Hoeven (Universal Music BV) Martin Jessurun (Warner Music Benelux BV) Berry van Sandwijk (Sony Music Entertainment Netherlands BV) Tom Willinck (V2 Records BV) Leo van Schaick ([PIAS] Holland) Tony van de Berkt (8ball Music BV)

LIST: NVPI MEMBERS Afreaka Records Medeastraat 9 Arnhem 6846 ZA afreaka-records.com [PIAS] Holland 8ball Music BV Van Diemenstraat 158 Van der Lindenlaan 2 Amsterdam 1013 CN Hilversum 1217 PK Phone: +31 (0)20 3031300 Phone: +31 (0)35 2050820 pias.com/network/holland 8ballmusic.nl

Armada Music BV Postbus 75247 Amsterdam 1070 AE Phone: +31 (0)20 4080846 armadamusic.com 2 Dutch BV Affect Sound Mecklenburgstraat 39 Lau Mazirellaan 14 Artifex11 Eindhoven 5615 PZ Den Haag 2525 ZE Noordermeerstraat 4 A Phone: +31 (0)85 4853905 affectsounds .nl/ Hoofddorp 2131 AD 2-dutch .nl

25 Caroline Benelux Cornelis Music Muntplein 10 C Van Dijklaan 22 Amsterdam 1012 WR Amstelhoek 1427 AE Phone: +31 (0)20 6380313 Phone: +31 (0)20 carolinebenelux.com 7651818 Be Yourself Catalogue BV cornelismusic.nl Papland 20 Casual Solution BV Gorinchem 4206 CL Pontonweg 1 CTM Music & Phone:+31 (0)183 699796 Ridderkerk 2987 RE Management beyourselfmusic.com Emmastraat 21 Challenge Records Hilversum 1211 NE Beterentertainment / Doggy International BV Phone: +31 (0)35 6474040 Records Siliciumweg 22 ctm.nl Keizersgracht 8 3812 SX Eindhoven 5611 GD Phone: +31 (0)33 CYB3RPVNK PRODUCTIONS B.V. Phone: +31 (0)40 2370464 7676110 Regenwulp 38 beyourselfmusic.com challengerecords.com Breda 4822 RH

Channel Classics De Haske Hal Leonard BV Records BV Postbus 744 Waaldijk 76 Heerenveen 8440 AS Herwijnen 4171 CG Phone: +31 (0)88 0233433 Phone: +31 (0)418 musicshopeurope.com 581800 channelclassics.com De Muziekfabriek BV Black Hole Recordings BV Mecklenburgstraat 39 Postbus 7042 Chillhop Music Eindhoven 5615 PZ Breda 4800 GA Schiekade 77 Phone: +31 (0)85 4853905 Phone: +31 (0)76 5209805 Rotterdam 3033 BE blackholerecordings.com chillhop.com Dee 2 Records BV Pampuslaan 59 BMG Talpa Music B.V. Cloud 9 Weesp 1382 JM Oude Amersfoortseweg 123 2 Recordings BV Phone: +31 (0)294 457505 Hilversum 1212 AA Pilotenstraat 6 K dee2records.com Phone:+31 (0)35 5333666 Amsterdam 1059 CJ Phone: +31 (0)20 4084266 Django Music & Publishing v.o.f. BOEP BV cloud9music.nl Baron Sweerts de Landas Gerrit van der Veenlaan 4 Wyborghstraat 8 3743 DN CNR Entertainment BV Katwijk ZH 2225 TE Phone: +31 (0)35 5426107 Postbus 3626 Phone: +31 (0)71 4071323 boep .nl Amsterdam 1001 AK Phone: +31(0)20 4624300 Dox Records Brothers United Records BV cnrentertainment.nl Kromme-Mijdrechtstraat s-Gravenlandseweg 6 D 110-3 Wateringen 2291 PE Coast to Coast BV Amsterdam 1079 LD bu-records.com Postbus 497 Phone: +31 (0)20 3011167 Bilthoven 3720 AL Caro Emerald BV Phone: +31 (0)30 2270715 El Chapo Productions/Music BV Asterweg 95 coasttocoast .nl Veemarkt 36 A Amsterdam 1031 HM Amsterdam 1019 DD Phone:+31 (0)20 ConvincedMGMT Phone: +31 (0)20 3583944 4276755 Essenburgstraat 33 B01 caroemerald.com Rotterdam 3022 MB

26 Epitaph Europe BV Jan Vis artiesten en evenementen Antennestraat 6 Graafseweg 358 Almere 1322 AB s-Hertogenbosch 5213 AS Phone: +31 (0)20 Phone: +31 (0)73 5219151 Mascot Provogue BV 5503838 janvis.nl Postbus 231 epitaph.com Berkel en Rodenrijs 2650 AE Jannes Produkties Phone: +31 (0)10 5120384 Nijbracht 122 mascotlabelgroup.com Emmen 7821 CE Phone: +31 (0)6 11183272 jannesonline.nl Fields of Roses Music Aalsmeerderweg 14 Kassem Touzani Aalsmeer 1432 CR Amethiststraat 9 Mirasound Media Services BV Phone: +31 (0)6 55371152 Groningen 9743 KE Bitterkruid 32 bastamusicstore.com Amersfoort 3824 ND Phone: +31 (0)33 4555004 Flow Records BV mirasound.nl Postbus 197 Lochem 7240 AD Krugang Modestus Records BV Phone: +31 (0)573 441941 kru-gang.com Postbus 1185 flowrecords.nl s-Hertogenbosch 5200 BE LAB Music BV Phone: +31 (0)73 8200040 Heroic Vendelstraat 2 Nieuwe Uitleg 29 Amsterdam 1012 XX More Life Entertainment s-Gravenhage 2514 BR lab-music.nl Boomsluiterskade 303 s-Gravenhage 2511 VJ Hit4US Phone: +31 (0)6 36388086 van Straelenlaan 3 morelifeentertainment.nl Soest 3762 CS modestus.nl Phone: +31 (0)35 6032056 hit4us nl. Lange Frans BV Music & Words (Blue Kapibara) langefrans .nl Rozenstraat 15 A Hollandsche School 3702 VK Wagnerlaan 30 Lessing Holding BV Phone: +31 (0)30 2270040 Hilversum 1217 CR Gillis Schoolmeesterlaan 18 musicwords.nl Phone: +31 (0)35 5339924 Haarlem 2015 EM moderneuropublishing.nl Neerlands Dope Liedjes Wibautstraat 150 Voorstad Sint Jacob 40 Amsterdam 1091 GR Roermond6041 LM Phone: +31 (0)20 Phone: +31 (0)475 330983 7372939 gereinders .nl neerlandsdope .nl

Marista Music Company News Records Holliwood Records Klein Schavernek 10 Dendermondsesteenweg 140 A bus 1 Goorseweg 19 Leeuwarden 8911 BV Gent 9000 7475 BB Phone: +31 (0)854 016435 Belgium Phone: +31 (0)6 51604900 marista.nl Phone: +32 (0)9 218 94 44 holliwoodrecords.com newsnv .be

27 Nits T.S. Skarster Music Tolstraat 82 III Investments C.V. Amsterdam 1073 SE Kyl 19 nits nl/nits. Joure 8502 AW Phone: +31 (0)513 NRGY Music Protocol Recordings 417460 Gerrit van der Veenlaan 4 Nieuweweg Noord 314 B25 aliudrecords.com Baarn 3743 DN 3906 LX Phone: +31 (0)35 6246161 Phone: +31 (0)23 6200628 Sonic Rendezvous DCM BV nrgymusic.nl protocolrecordings.com Berenkoog 53 C Alkmaar 1822 BN O.J. Fam Entertainment Pure Imagination Records Phone: +31 (0)72 5673036 H . Cleyndertweg 205 Amsteldijk Noord 50 sonic .nl/sonic_nl Amsterdam 1025 DL Amstelveen 1184 TD Phone: +31 (0)20 6465227

Purple Eye Entertainment BV Postbus 338 Bussum 1400 AH Phone: +31 (0)35 6958411 Sony Music Entertainment Paradox / PAN Records purple-eye .nl Netherlands BV Hommelveld 20 Overhoeksplein 29 Leiden 2318 VC QuatroVision Amsterdam 1031 KS Phone: +31 (0)71 5219479 Kikkenstein 3934 Phone: +31 (0)20 2261600 panrecords .nl Amsterdam 1104 TZ sonymusic.nl

Strengholt Music Productions BV Postbus 338 Bussum 1400 AH Red Bullet BV Phone: +31 (0)35 6958580 Pentatone Music BV Alexanderlaan 2 strengholtmusic.com Prinses Marielaan 8 B Hilversum 1213 XS Baarn 3743 JA Phone: +31 (0)35 6460000 Striker Recordings Phone: +31 (0)35 5480720 redbullet .nl Reguliersdwarsstraat 90 pentatonemusic.com Amsterdam 1017 BN wearestriker.com

Revanche Records PM Recordings Nachwachtlaan 345 Studio 100 NV M.H. Tromplaan 55 Amsterdam 1058 EM Halfstraat 80 Enschede 7513 AB revancherecords.com Schelle 2627 Phone: +31 (0)88 0124860 Belgium pm-recordings.com Rotterdam Airlines Phone: +32 3 8776035 Hoogstraat 20 A Rotterdam 3011 PP Suburban Marketing & Phone: +31 (0)10 Distribution B.V. 2375154 Donkere Spaarne 14 zw rotterdamairlines.nl Haarlem 2011 JG Phone: +31 (0)23 5445250 suburban .nl

28 Telstar Grammofoonplatenmij. BV Van Hoevelaak Records BV Wilde Westen Records Oosterpark 58 Espelodijk 5 Westlandseweg 7 b Amsterdam 1092 AR Holten 7451 KS Wateringen 2291 PG Phone: +31 (0)6 14179951 Phone: +31 (0)572 320084 Phone: +31 (0)6 telstar-music.nl armendamusic.com 46635269 wildewestenrecords .nl The Ambassadors of Entertainment BV Xplo Music BV Catharina van Renneslaan 8 Haringvliet 78 Hilversum 1217 CX Rotterdam 3011 TG Phone: +31 (0)35 6226453 Phone: +31 (0)10 4149990 ambassadorsofentertainment.nl xplomusic.com Vosound Records The Source BV Emmastraat 21 ZenneZ Records Wagenmakerstraat 5 Hilversum 1211 NE Mooierstraat 43 Ridderkerk 2984 BD Phone: +31 (0)35 6474040 Amersfoort 3811 EB Phone: +31 (0)180 481426 vosound .nl zennezrecords.com the-source eu. Walboomers Music Top Notch Tussen de Bogen 32 Staalstraat 7 A Amsterdam 1013 JB Amsterdam 1011 JJ Phone: +31 (0)20 top-notch .nl 4713107 walboomers.com Umoja Music Zonamo Entertainment Keienbergweg 46 Verrijn Stuartweg 30 A Amsterdam 1101 GC Diemen 1112 AX Phone: +31 (0)20 3547120 zonamounderground.nl umojamusic.com ZYX Music BV Deken van Oppensingel 132 Warner Music Benelux BV Venlo 5911 AG Universal Music BV Postbus 749 Phone: +31 (0)4750 24499 Postbus 1908 Hilversum 1200 AS zyxmusic.nl/ Hilversum 1200 BX Phone: +31 (0)35 6465600 Phone: +31 (0)35 626 1500 warnermusic.nl universalmusic.nl

Use Me Music Company BV Groene Dijk 14 Ijsselstein 3402 NJ usememusic.com WedgeView Music Enterprices BV V2 Records BV Fascinatio Boulevard 742 Bonairelaan 2 Capelle aan den Ijssel 2909 VA Hilversum 1213 VH Phone: +31 (0)10 411 6330 Phone: +31 (0)35 6461234 v2benelux.com

29 3 - THE LIVE MUSIC INDUSTRY IN THE NETHERLAND OVERVIEW OF THE LIVE MUSIC SCENE IN THE NETHERLANDS The Netherlands has a healthy and busy live music scene, with one of the best infrastructure in Europe, covering all sizes of venues, from clubs to outdoors stadiums.

Venues in Amsterdam include mid-size halls like the and , as well as arenas like Dome. Rotterdam also has a wide range of facilities, from for alternative music to the Ahoy arena.

Eindhoven’s and Dynamo are popular destinations as is De Oosterpoort in Groningen . Haarlem hosts , which is one of the ten most popular venues for rock, alternative and EDM acts. Anyone from Herman Brood to Danko Jones played there .

The GelreDome in Arnhem is a stadium that has seen many international and local acts perform, from Celine Dion and to André Rieu and Rihanna .

Holland also has one of the busiest festival scene in Europe with events such as Amsterdam Dance Event being one of the main dance music festival and conference in Europe, Parkpop in The Hague, in Rotterdam, the Solar Weekend in Roermond, Eurosonic/ Noorderslag in Groningen, featuring new up-and-coming European acts, to name but a few.

The Dutch Association of Music Venues and Festivals (VNPF), created in 1993, regroups most venues and festivals taking place in the Netherlands. In 2019, it noted that the number of visitors to large concerts – over 3,000 visitors – has grown considerably: 207 concerts monitored by VNPF welcomed 2.9 million visitors in 2019, up 16% compared to the year before .

Revenues increased by 25% to €165 million (excl. VAT), due in part to the 7% growth in the number of large concerts and also to ticket price increases . It also incorporated the effects of the increase in VAT rate from 6 to 9%. According to VNPF, the average ticket price for concerts increased by 7% to €56 .60 .

The concert series of Marco Borsato attracted the most visitors in 2019 with 240,000 tickets buyers, and contributed substantially to the Rotterdamse Kuip taking the lead spot as the most popular venue in terms of tickets sold. Also in Rotterdam, the stadium De Kuip hosted 285,000 concert goers in 2019, while there were no concerts in 2018 at this location. André Rieu’s concerts at the Vrijthof in Maastricht and Guus Meeuwis in Eindhoven welcomed 150,000 and 135,000 visitors, respectively.

In August 2019, VNPF regrouped 56 music venues – 16 large venues of 1,000 seats or more, 27 medium-size venues between 400 and 999 seats, and 13 small-size venues, with less than 400 seats. It also counts 48 festivals among its membership, which went up from 92 in 2018 to 104 in 2019.

30 VNPF venues members hosted 15,733 events in 2018 (last sats available), 71% of which were music-related events, attracting 5.2 million visitors. Of the 26,000 music performances registered by VNPF members, 63% were by Dutch artists for concerts and 82% by domestic acts for club nights, with international acts accounting for 37% and 18% respectively . The sector employed 7,700 people, 54% of which were volunteers and 42% were hired as freelancers.

A listing of the main venues and festivals can be found here: https://vnpf.nl/media/files/vnpf-dutch-music-venues-and-festivals----facts--figures-2018-english-version.pdf

Yourope has list of the main festivals in the Netherlands, from https://www.yourope.org/cms/yourope-members/

A list of Dutch festivals can be found here: https://www.musicfestivalwizard.com/festival-guide/the-netherlands/

Eurosonic Noorderslag also has a delegates database with loads of information available to delegates with registration . https://esns nl.

LIVE MUSIC: INTERVIEW WITH BEREND SCHANS (VNPF) Berend Schans is director of VNPF . He explains here what his organization is about and offers key takeaways about the live music sector in the Netherlands.

Can you outline what VNPF is and does? VNPF is the industry association of music venues and music festivals in the Netherlands and has existed since 1993 . In August 2019, VNPF had 104 members, consisting of 56 music venues and 48 music festivals. In the interest of its members, VNPF exerts influence on legislation and government policy that concern music venues and festivals. Important topics are for example cultural policy, working conditions, legislation, taxes, copyrights, programming, prevention of hearing damage and regulations about public safety.

Do you provide specific services to your members? VNPF develops services for its members to improve their performances. With the development of the online ‘Music Venues Analysis System’, venues may compare the ways in which they run their business. Thanks to collective agreements with suppliers, venues may receive discounts on different products and services. The VNPF office also runs the administration of the related employers’ association WNPF that developed the industry’s own collective bargaining agreement. The VNPF promotes knowledge exchange with an online social platform for members and different meetings such as members days, an annual conference and a number of seminars at Eurosonic Noorderslag in Groningen. During ESNS the VNPF also awards the annual prizes ‘IJzeren Podiumdieren’ to its members.

Would that you represent most of the venues and festivals in the country? We certainly represent most of the venues, and all the important festivals.

How would you describe the network of venues in he Netherlands? It is very rich – in the sense of density – and well equipped. But there are rather large mutual differences. Some venues have hundreds of people on the payroll, some have only one or two full-time staffers and the rest is volunteers. There are some big differences in scale as well, with some venues with a capacity of 250 or 400 while others have 3,000 seats .

31 Does the fact that many venues receive subsidies from local governments allow programmers/ bookers to take more risks? No, the subsidies are very small compared with other cultural organizations, and only for the exploitation of the building. There is no funding for programming. There is a little bit from the Dutch Fund for performing arts, but only for Dutch emerging bands.

How diverse is the programming of venues and festivals? It depends which venue or festival you are looking at. Pinkpop or Le Guess Who are totally different in their programming approach. Paradiso and Melkweg for example can have a more diverse programming than, for instance, Metropool in Hengelo .

Do festivals take chances booking unknown bands? Of course, festivals do take chances booking unknown bands. They book a couple of headliners for selling tickets and the rest of the slots are filled with a mixture of what available, what fits in their profile, and what is affordable . That won’t be very different than in Canada, the USA or the UK, I guess . .

What advise would you give to Canadian artists who want to tour the Netherlands? Depends on what kind of artist and what the goals are. Do you want to get your name established or do you want to earn lots of money? If it is the latter, it is not going to happen. Create a fan base before hitting Dutch soil . Find a good local partner, be a good band/artist/collective . Dutch audience is rather used to a lot and maybe a bit spoilt for choices.

INTERVIEW WITH LOCAL CONCERT PROMOTER / FESTIVAL ORGANIZER: PETER SMIDT (EUROSONIC NOORDERSLAG) Each year in January, the European and global live music sector congregates to the North of the Netherlands, in Groningen, for the Eurosonic Noorderslag festival and conference (ESNS) .

Started in 1986 by Peter Smidt, who grew up in Groningen, the four-day event has become a byword for new European talent. Agents, promoters, venues and festival programmers know that this is where they can discover the next generation of artists coming from all over Europe, picked by ESNS booker Robert Meijerink. The event takes place at the Oosterpoort, which offers a combination of concert and conference venue.

The first year, 1,500 people attended a festival with 19 acts, and in 2019 there were over 42,000 visitors with over 350 act performing. Each year, the festival picks a focus country (Switzerland in 2020, Denmark the previous year) and invites several artists from the country in focus to play in Groningen .

ESNS is operated by Buma Cultuur, the promotional arm of rights society BUMA STEMRA. ESNS works very closely with several key partners such as the European Commission (ESNS hosts the Music Moves Europe Talent Awards, supported by the Commission), Yourope (association of European festivals), the European Talent Exchange Program (ETEP) and the European Broadcasting Union, among others.

Peter Smidt was organizing concerts in Groningen before launching Eurosonic Noorderslag. In 2019, he announced that he was taking a step back from the event he contributed to create and manage. Here he explains why the event has such a distinctive European flavor.

32 How did you get into the live music business? For sure, it was by design, but also by accident. When I was about 18, I was a musician and like every musician I needed a rehearsal space, so I was squatting the Grand Theater in Groningen that was empty and was going to be demolished to make room for a mall. At some point I noticed a room upstairs that was not used and I started organizing concerts there with alternative musicians like Tuxedo Moon, bands from Berlin and a mix between art and music. It was easy to make promotion, hand out leaflets, put posters out. It got quite popular. At the same time I was also organizing shows for my own band and I was asked to run shows for others. At some point at Grand Theater, we got subsidies to make it like a working place. I also started working at a festival, the Groningen Summer Festival, doing bookings there, using some venues like the Martini Plaza. At some point the Oosterpoort asked me to work exclusively for them. I liked it, I had a venue and I did not have to lose my own money.

When did the idea of Eurosonic started? Before I worked as Oosterpoort, I was asked to organize a festival in the Oosterpoort with a little budget, so with some friends, we wondered what to do with that budget! At that time, Dutch music was not considered to be happening very much and the audience was not really into it. The audience was looking for UK and US acts. But at the same time there was some great bands popping up very much in the underground and I was organizing shows for them in bars and squats – bands like Fatal Flowers, Claw Claw and a whole range of bands that were playing fast guitar music, and putting on good live shows. We called the first edition of the festival Holland-Belgium and presented 10 bands from Belgium and 10 from Holland. The director of the Oosterpoort did not have much faith because we did not have any big name. He suggested we booked Golden Earing and we said no. To much of our surprise, it was sold out. An influential journalist wrote a review and he said the end result was Holland 1 - Belgium 0. It was a major recognition for Dutch bands and because of the initial success we thought we could continue and do another festival the following year . But since we could not do Holland-Belgium again, we though of something like the north of Holland versus the rest of Holland. And that went very well . That’s how the festival evolved as a place to present the new Dutch artists . We needed to have a name. We were close to deadline and someone out of the blue said slaag, and I said that’s it! It has several meanings like battle or hammering on something, so Norderslaag was a brilliant name. That’s how it started .

How did it become also a conference? Because this was the only place where people could see all the new bands in one night in one venue, we pretty soon had a lot of people from the music business coming to Norderslaag to check the bands. That’s where Urban Dance Squad did one of their first shows, and so did The Nits or Candy Dulfer. At some point, the professionals there were, talking business at bars and I figured that maybe we should create a more efficient way to network with some conference sessions. We started with a conference talking about the Dutch music sector. It was a small conference. I was wondering how I could make it financially with this conference. For the first Norderslaag conference [in 1990], the ticket was 25 guilders for the festival and 25 guilders for the conference, and it was 40 guilders for the conference and the festival . Eventually we had about 150 people, which is good for a first time.

When did you extend the festival to European acts? We were putting on stage these Dutch bands and some professionals from other countries came to Norderslaag. I thought that if we could make a European event around Norderslaag, then professionals from other countries would think it would be worthwhile to come. That’s how the idea grew. I also became aware of network meetings that Ruud Berends [currently ESNS program manager] was doing with [German journalist] Manfred Tari involving some small independent promoters in Europe. On the festival side, a lot of bands from Groningen were complaining that they were not booked and I thought I could mix bands from Europe and Groningen. As I was into Dutch music I thought strange that there were so many borders but then realized that I did not know any bands from Germany or France. How stupid was that? That’s when we decided to have a platform for the new European acts to present themselves to both an audience of professionals and the public.

33 When did Buma Cultuur got into the picture? I needed money to develop the conference and to promote Dutch acts. Since I was frequently contacting Buma Cultuur to ask for support, at some point I was asked to join the organization I said OK but my baby Eurosonic Norderslaag must come with me and you have to be partners in the event. They were interested and for me it was the opportunity to build it as a larger event. It’s really thanks to Buma Cultuur that I could build this event.

Eurosonic is exclusively a platform for new up and coming European artists. Why are you not opening to other countries outside Europe? Because I think that you have to have a focus and it is important to keep the focus otherwise it can become too wide. Nowadays there are a lot of festivals/showcase around and professionals get to see a lot of talent from everywhere. It is important to have at least one event dedicated to European music and if we were to open up to bands from Canada, Africa or Russia, it would change the focus. There is some great talent coming from Canada, and the whole system of support in Canada is brilliant, but to me it makes sense to have at least once a year a focus on European acts and on the circulation of European repertoire. And we’ve kept Saturday as a showcase for Dutch acts . The whole concept of Europe as a continent needs a lot of support to help a better circulation of repertoire .

What do you think of Dutch live music market? It is healthy? The Netherlands has a vey sophisticated live music circuit, maybe one the best in the world in the sense that there are a lot of venues. Over the last 20 years, most of the cities, which had old venues, have invested in new, specially built venues for pop music. Every medium size city has a very good infrastructure, with large capacity venues (800-1600 people) and small venues (200-400 capacity). You now have very well equipped venues that do bookings seven days a week and most of the venues are also promoters. The Dutch association of venues VNPF regroups most of the venues. There is a large number of promoters in Holland in all genres, varying from Mojo, Friendly Fire, Greenhouse, etc. They are all very professional and good promoters who work with both large shows in stadiums and small size shows and book festivals.

Aren’t most venues in Holland subsidized? Venues are funded by local money, not national money. The Ministry of Culture does not have much to do with venues, which depend on local councils that decide if they keep the venues alive. Budgets for venues are taken over from local budgets, money for acts has to come from the audience, not subsidies.

Any tips to Canadian bands that want to tour? In general, it is quite easy to tour two weeks in Holland doing a series of small venues. The audience here is very dynamic and they like to go out, but you need to do promotion next to the promoters. There are a lot of independent promoters you can contract who can promote concerts in Holland. There are also a lot of media outlets focusing on music. These days, most of the media outlets are online, but there are still several magazine that offer lots of opportunities to promote artists and lot of room to perform. In addition, next the established venues, there’s also a large circuit of bars that do live music.

Any advice to a the manager of a Canadian band who wants to build a following in Holland? It depends on what sort of music. If it’s electronic music, you should go to Amsterdam Dance Event that everyone in the Dutch and international scene attends. It’s ideal to make a lot of contact. If you are in pop and rock, you should go to Eurosonic where you can make good connections. It also depends on the status of the artist. You should be able to find a promoter and it does not need to be one of the bigger ones. You have promoters that specialize in specific genres like urban, rock or electronic. It also depends if there is material out or if you have a label for example. On the live side, you have lots of venues and festivals. Promoters like to build bands themselves, so it is important to chose a good partner. Look for the best promoter for your bands. They are usually very open and they are all at Eurosonic, constantly looking for new bands.

34 4 - MUSIC PUBLISHING IN THE NETHERLANDS OVERVIEW Music publishing in the Netherlands benefits from a strong copyright protection system, an efficient performance rights society and good rates for the use of music by radio and TV. In the Netherlands, like in the rest of the European Union, copyright is protected for 70 years after the author’s death .

Most of the country’s music publishers are part of NMUV – the Dutch Music Publishers Association (Nederlandse Muziek Uitgevers Vereniging). The organization was founded in 1992 and represents both independent local and major publishing companies.

NMUV has an elected board of at least five members and holds a general meeting of members at least once a year .

Another organization, VMN, represents sheet music publishers and traders in the Netherlands. NMUV and VMN have set up a joint organization, FEMU, to monitor, enforce and collect the proceeds from the use of sheet music, a function that was previously done by Stemra. FEMU is controlled by the CVTA (Board of Supervision of Copyright and Neighboring Rights) .

Most Dutch publishers sign local authors, composers and and help them develop. Many publishers have also developed recording studios and more than often are also the owners of recordings from their signings. Some Dutch publishers also work with international partners to sign and develop local talent.

Such is the case of CTM Publishing, partnering with New York-based Repertoire to sign a worldwide publishing deal with Dutch-born and performer Thom Bridges, which will see the two partners work together on all creative and administrative aspects of Bridges’ songwriting career. Bridges has a recording contract with Universal Music Germany.

Other publishers have focused on library music, like Dennis Music Production Music Library, which one of the oldest library music publishers in the Netherlands (since 1968). Dennis Music represents more than 40 labels in the Netherlands, and provides over 125,000 tracks for licensing.

Others like Small Stone Media focus on christian music for the Dutch market and abroad, and represents most publishers of Christian music from the US.

In the Netherlands, almost all foreign musical works are represented by Dutch sub-publishers. In return, most Dutch music publishers are represented internationally by foreign sub-publishers. Sub-publishing deals are quite often done for the Benelux as a whole rather than just for the Netherlands.

This is the case for example of a recent deal between Cloud 9 Music, one of the main indie publishers in Holland, and London-based RAK to represent the British catalogue in the Benelux .

A sub-publisher in the Netherlands will register the original publisher’s repertoire with BUMA STEMRA, look for synch opportunities and covers with local artists and ensure that the repertoire is correctly exploited .

Some international publishers choose to have a direct affiliation with BUMA STEMRA without going through a sub-publisher. This can be a good business decision if the catalogue is mostly of contemporary hits that do not require boots on the ground to develop a repertoire .

The synch market is rather limited due to the size of the market but opportunities can arise with local advertising and movies. Strengholt Music recently place the track ‘Heb Je Even Voor Mij’ by Frans Bauer for a campaign by gingerbread brand Peijnenburg covering the Benelux.

35 LIST: NMUV’S BOARD Chairman: Mark Bremer, Managing Director of Universal Music Publishing Benelux Vice Chairman: Edith Severs, Managing Director Copyright Power Int. BV Treasurer: Arno van Berkel, Managing Director of Warner Chappell Music Group Netherlands Secretary: Wim Kwakman, Managing Director of Pennies From Heaven BV Niels Walboomers, Managing Director Sony / ATV Raymond van Vliet, Managing Director of Cloud 9 Music Dennis Bosheck, General Manager Dennis Music BV Levy Isabella, General Manager Music Publishing of BMG Talpa Ad Heskes, General Director NMUV and VMN

LIST: MUSIC PUBLISHERS IN THE NETHERLANDS Armada Publishing BB Hal Leonard MGB Group Spirit Music Group armadamusic.com halleonardeurope.com spiritmusicgroup.com

AT Publishing High Fashion Music Strengholt Music atpublishing .nl Holiday on Ice Productions BV strengholtmusic.com holidayonice.com/nl/en/home/ Benelux Music Strictly Confidential Music telstar-music.nl Houston Comma Publishing http://houstoncomma.com strictly-confidential.net BMG Talpa bmg.com/de/about.html Kobalt Music Publishing Top Format Productions kobaltmusic.com topformat.com Brands Music brandsmusic.com La French Music Universal Music Publishing BV alliance-francaise .nl/2020/ umusicpub.com/nl/ Ccontrol Publishing Cloud 9 Music Maktub Music Publishers BV Wallboomers Publishing cloud9music.nl MusicCallStars Publishing BV walboomers.com/artists musicallstars.nl Collect Music Publisher Wallaby Publishing collectmp.com Nanada Music Warner Chapell Music Holland Peermusic Benelux nl.warnerchappell.com Copyright Power peermusic.com/aboutus/offices copyrightpower.com WVS Music Publishing Pennies from Heaven telstar-music.nl CTM Publishing penniesfromheaven.nl ctm.nl Pepflow Dennis Music Production Music pepflow.nl Library dennismusic.com RTL Nederland Music Publishing Small Stone Media Downtown Music Publishing smallstonemedia.com Benelux facebook.com/downtownbenelux/ Sony ATV Music Publishing sonyatv.com/en

36 5 – COPYRIGHT & MUSIC RIGHTS ORGANISATIONS COPYRIGHT IN THE NETHERLANDS The first copyright legislation in the Netherlands, the Authors’ Rights Act of 1912, defined copyright as “the exclusive right of the author of a literary, scientific or artistic work or his successors in title to communicate that work to the public and to reproduce it, subject to limitations defined by law.”

Since then, the law has been changed or amended several times to take into account newly signed international treaties of European Union new Directives .

International treaties is automatic, free-of-charge and copyright protection The Netherlands is a signatory to the following applies internationally . international copyright treaties: the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works of Copyright is the exclusive right of the author of a work 1886, the UN Universal Copyright Convention of (or his or her heirs). The law defines the right of making 1952, the Rome Convention for the Protection of available the works to the public (Article 12 of the Performers, Producers of Phonograms and Broadcasting Copyright Act) and the right of reproduction of works Organizations of 1961, the Agreement on Trade- (Articles 13 and 14) . Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) of 1994, and WIPO’s Copyright Treaty and the Term of protection Performances and Phonograms Treaty (WPPT) of 1996. Copyright protection applies to works for the life of the creator plus 70 years after the death of the work’s As a member of the European Union, the Netherlands creator or following the death of the longest living has adapted into its own legislation the various author, if the work is a co-write. For neighboring rights, Directives from the European Commission, in particular protection is for 70 years from the fixation of the work. the 2014 Directive on collective management of copyright and related rights and multi-territorial Neighboring rights licensing. The most recent Directive Directive on Neighboring rights fall under the Neighboring Rights Copyright in the Digital Single Market of 2019 has not Act, which protect performers and producers of records yet been transposed into Dutch legislation . and films, and broadcasting organizations.

Dutch copyright law Home copy levy The latest amendment to the Dutch Authors’ Rights The Netherlands also has a Home Copying Levy, by Act (Auteurswet) was in 2015 to adapt to the the which manufacturers and importers of blank recording 2014 Directive. It came into force on 1 July 2015. It media in the Netherlands pay a fee collected by the strengthened the contractual position of authors and Stichting de Thuiskopie (Home Copy Foundation). The performing artists in relation to the parties exploiting foundation then distributes the proceeds to various their creative works (among others, publishers, film rights holders: composers, lyricists and music publishers. producers and record companies). Enforcement and legal action The law automatically protects the copyright of works Copyright disputes can be heard by all Dutch districts . of literature, science or art from the moment the work There is not specific court having exclusive jurisdiction is created, on condition that the work in question is an over copyright cases. Infringement suits can be filed if original work. works have been changed, adapted or made available to the public without the consent of the original right holders . Copyright-protected works include: books, music, films, paintings and drawings, software, video games, apps, Only the holders of the copyright allegedly infringed architectural drawings, photos, and videos. Works of or their successors in title can file actions for copyright creation do not need to be registered or filed. Copyright infringement. According to Dutch law firm Leeway

37 Advocaten, a copyright owner ca request the following In proceedings on the merits, the court fees will depend remedies under Dutch procedural law: on the amount of damage claimed and the attorney’s - seizure of the infringing products, money and evidence; fees will generally be between €15,000 and €50,000 - an ex parte order to immediately stop the infringement; (depending on the nature of the matter) for the - preliminary injunction proceedings: most copyright proceedings at first instance. cases are being resolved by injunction proceedings (intra partes); Moral rights - proceedings on the merits, where the plaintiff can Alongside commercial exploitation rights, the Dutch obtain an injunction, a full disclosure, a rectification, copyright law provides moral rights to creators. These a recall and a compensation for damages and/or rights protect works from being exploited in a way that surrender of profits. the original creator of the works object to. For example a songwriter can decline to have works used for advertising According to law firm Blenheim, the Dutch Copyright with certain brands or products, or modified from their Act provides for the following remedies: full damages; original form. The moral right is not assignable but can surrendering of the profits made from the infringement; be waived . destruction of infringing products disposal outside the course of trade; or destruction of materials More on copyright law in the Netherlands predominantly used for the manufacturing of the A full overview of Dutch copyright legislation is available infringing products . on the business.gov site provided by government body Netherlands Enterprise Agency, RVO . Cost of legal action https://business .gov .nl/regulation/copyright/ Leeway Advocaten notes that injunction proceedings typically cost between €600 and €700 in court fees Lotte Rutgers, Bente van der Eijnden and Michiel Odink and between €8,000 and €25,000 in attorney’s from law firm Leeway Advocaten have written an exhaustive fees (depending on the nature of the case) for the overview of copyright in the Netherlands for Lexology . proceedings at first instance. https://www.lexology.com/library/detail. aspx?g=560596f0-069d-49bc-ae51-1feba07b3d4b

OVERVIEW MUSIC RIGHTS ORGANISATIONS The music rights market in the Netherlands is dominated by two societies: BUMA STEMRA for authors’ rights and SENA for neighboring rights. Both societies have reciprocal agreements with Canadian societies, respectively SOCAN and Re:Sound, ACTRA PRS, MROC and Artisti .

Canadian songwriters and composers have their rights protected and collected in the Netherlands by BUMA, which distributes to SOCAN the proceeds from the use of Canadian repertoire in the country.

Canadian music publishers can have a direct affiliation to BUMA STEMRA or through a sub-publisher.

For neighboring rights, SENA collects royalties for the use of music in public spaces and from the proceeds of the private copy levy, and distributes it to performers and record labels. Performers and labels in Canada will receive royalties for the use of their music in the Netherlands trough the organization they are affiliated with or via the neighboring rights collector they have appointed. Depending on the volume of rights, labels could find it more efficient to have a direct affiliation with SENA.

Both sets of rights generate significant revenues for rights holders. The Netherlands has one of the best rights collection system, supported by strong laws and good rates. In addition, the Netherlands is one of the European countries with a private copy levy, which contributes to the high level of collections . And both SENA and BUMA STEMRA have very competitive revenue-to-cost ratios.

38 Music performance rights are set by negotiations between BUMA STEMRA and music users. In the case of radio and TV, here are some indicative prices from 2015, for a 3-minute song played on radio and TV channels:

1 : €43,74 180 seconds x €0,243 p/s 2 Radio 3FM: €20,70 180 seconds x €0,115 p/s 3 NPO 1, 2, 3: €55,26 180 seconds x €0,307 p/s 4 RTL 4: €116,28 180 seconds x €0,646 p/s (Source: BUMA STEMRA)

Live performances are calculated based on a percentage of the gross receipts and/or the wages, with a surface price as the minimum remuneration. The percentage is usually around 7%.

Mechanical revenues are based on the number of copies pressed and sold, or downloaded, with a percentage applied for rights holders (songwriters and publishers), minus administrative costs.

Below is a sample of the media BUMA collects performance rights from: Radio: TV: Network Providers: - NPO - NPO - Ziggo /UPC - ROOS - ROOS - KPN / - Olon - Olon - - VCR - ThemaNed - - RH VIMN - Vodafone - SBS - - SBS6 - Other providers - Disney Channels - Fox International Channel (Source: BUMA STEMRA)

Shops, restaurants, bars and any public space wishing to play music in public, have to apply for a license that covers both the composition and the recordings. The source of the music can be radio, CDs, streaming services or suppliers of background music. BUMA STEMRA and SENA offer a joint license for public spaces using music. (https://www. mijnlicentie.nl)

Collective management organizations in the Netherlands are under the supervision of the Dutch Copyright Supervisory Board (College van Toezicht Auteursrecht, or CvTA) .

39 PERFORMING RIGHTS ORGANIZATIONS: BUMA/STEMRA The sole PRO in the Netherlands is BUMA STEMRA, which operates as a performance rights society, collecting for the use of music in public space or on media outlets such as TV and radio (BUMA), and as a mechanical collections agency (STEMRA) .

According to the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC), the Netherlands was the 11th biggest market in the world and music collections accounted for 2.3% of the world’s total, at €191 million in 2018.

Rights society BUMA STEMRA is central to the Dutch music eco-system. It collects and distributes the proceeds form the use of music to songwriters, composers and publishers, and through its spin-off Buma Cultuur, it provides the system with significant funds for cultural projects, financing and organizing events such as Eurosonic Norderslaag, and subsidizing numerous events or programs such as Dutch Music Export.

BUMA or Bureau voor Muziekauteursrecht (Bureau of Music Authors’ Rights) was founded in 1913 at the initiative of GeNeCo (Genootschap van Nederlandse Componisten, the Society of Dutch Contemporary Composers) and the VMN. STEMRA was set up in 1936 to deal with the licensing of mechanical rights applied to reproductible media and the two organizations were combined for management efficiencies.

Today, BUMA/STEMRA represents some 28,000 composers, lyricists and authors, as well as music publishers. The rights society collects royalties for the use of music in public spaces, on radio and TV, digital services, etc.

BUMA/STEMRA is part of the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers and has reciprocal agreements with sister societies around the world. Sister societies collects the royalties owed to Dutch authors, composers and publishers for the use of their repertoire abroad. In return, BUMA distributes to non-Dutch rights holders royalties collected on their behalf in the Netherlands for the use of their repertoire .

In Canada, BUMA has an affiliation with SOCAN. In 2018, BUMA received CA$384,000 from SOCAN, up from CA$334,000 in 2017, and sent to Canada CA2.019 million, up from CA$1.563 million in 2017.

BUMA STEMRA’s 2020 budget was adopted by the Supervisory Board in December 2019 based in part on the society’s latest expectations for the financial year 2019: copyright royalties collected and distributions above budget, lower operational expenses and investment results “well above the standard return.” Compared to the 2019 budget, BUMA STEMRA expects to collect €9.7 million more copyright royalties in 2020 and to distribute €11.1 million more to rights owners. [The budget was adopted before the coronavirus pandemic.]

The 2020 budget projects royalties collections by BUMA up €8.5 million (4.8%) from the 2019 budget at €185.2m. BUMA forecasts and increase in the Online market for streaming and VOD and from the Pan-European license agreements with major Digital Service Providers.For STEMRA, the forecast is that royalties collected in 2020 will be €1.2m (4.0%) higher than for the 2019 budget.

As for distributions, BUMA’s 2020 budget is set on €155.8m, up €5.8m (3.9%) over 2019, due a forecasted increase in the Online funds available for distribution. A €10.6 million addition to the Social and Cultural Fund has been taken into account. The copyright royalties to be distributed by Stemra for 2020 are budgeted with a €5.3m (17.6%) hike over 2019’s budget.

In 2018, BUMA STEAMRA collected €213.4m in royalties (€181.0m for BUMA and €32.4m for STEMRA) from the following sources: Radio, TV and Network Providers (€71.4m), Live performances (€34.1m), Work spaces, shops and stores (€30.4m), Restaurants and bars (€14.9m), Online (€13.7m), and International (€16.5m). Distributions in 2018 reached €180.7m, of which €155.6m came from BUMA and €25.1m from STEMRA. BUMA distributed €87.3m to rights owners, €57.9m to CMO’s abroad and €10.4m to the Fund for Social and Cultural Purposes.

40 INTERVIEW WITH BUMA-STEMRA’S ROBERT BARUCH Robbert Baruch, is Manager Public Affairs and Compliance Officer at BUMA- STEMRA. He looks after the society’s relationship with policy-makers at a national and international level. He discusses here the key issues faced by his organization .

What are BUMA STEMRA’s main sources of revenues? Radio and TV, Live Events and General Rights follow by Foreign Income, Online and STEMRA mechanicals.

Is streaming picking up? Yes, budget for copyright royalties to be collected by BUMA in 2020 is €8 5. million, or 4.8% higher than the budget for 2019. Most of this increase is expected in the online market for streaming and VOD and from the pan- European licence agreements with major Digital Service Providers. The increase in Pan-European licensing implies that BUMA will collect less through sister organizations. The copyright royalties to be collected by Stemra for 2020 are €1.2 million (4.0%) higher than the budget for 2019. As with BUMA, most of this increase is expected in the Online market, which implies that less will be collected through sister organizations.

Any challenges? Of course, to name a few: Survival of the fittest in the world of colelctive management organizations (CMOs), competition between CMOs on members, to stay healthy, to replace our current ERP system and review our processes, to expand on Direct Licences Online for our repertoire not only pan-European but also possibly on a global scale, to keep our members satisfied, to keep our collections at least on the same level, and of course how to get out of the Corona crisis . .

Can you give us indications on how the Canadian repertoire is performing in the Netherlands? The Canadian repertoire is doing well in the Netherlands based on our figures and our distributions to SOCAN. On the basis of our figures, SOCAN received from BUMA € 1.222.644,16 and from STEMRA € 2.440,81.

Should Canadian songwriters and composers register directly to Buma-Stemra? If this is more efficient for them, yes. However, we have a long history of mutual cooperation with SOCAN and that works well. SOCAN is preforming well and we have a longstanding, friendly and good cooperation with SOCAN.

SUPPORTING THE MUSIC SECTOR: THE ROLE OF BUMA CULTUUR INTERVIEW WITH FRANK HELMINK – BUMA-STEMRA Rights society BUMA-STEMRA assigns each year funds to support and promote music creation in the Netherlands, through its spin-off BUMA Cultuur. Frank Helmink, managing director of Buma Cultuur, explains how the organization operates.

Can you describe what Buma Cultuur is and does? Buma Cultuur is part of copyright organization Buma-Stemra. Our mission is both simple and broad: we promote music written by our members (30,000 Dutch composers). Our market is the Netherlands AND the most important export-markets in the world. We initiate and organist events, such as co-producing ESNS, the Amsterdam Dance Event, Injazz and so on, but also co-operate with the Dutch government to help acts attending showcases abroad and especially promoting themselves in all possible territories .

41 How are you financed? By Buma-Stemra and sponsors. Some of our events are big enough to operate as a stand alone “company” such as ADE, some will need funding, because the market is too small. Funding means we see opportunities for our composers in this genre.

What are the key A&R trends in the Dutch music market? Not really different from other European countries: mainly hip hop (), young kids are taking over online consumption, which means a lot of artists – not promoted by any kind of old school media-attention are streamed millions and millions of times. 30+ people really don’t have a clue who those artists are. Secondly we saw a swift change in “respect” in the audience for Dutch music and Dutch-language music.

How are domestic acts doing in the Netherlands? And abroad? In the Netherlands they are “taking over” a huge part of the market. Abroad, our export is showing quite nice growth over the last 10 years, from a worth of 50 million euros to over 200 million euros last year.

What are the most genres in the Netherlands? Hip hop and EDM, mostly.

Is the Dutch market difficult to crack for foreign artists? Not at all, depending on the genre, but the usual suspects that are worldwide stars will be stars in Holland as well .

Has there been success stories of Canadian artists recently in the Netherlands? Drake sold out I don’t know how many nights in our biggest venue, despite being late, postponing and so on. The Weeknd is big, and so is Bieber of course. As far as alternative is concerned there is a certain attention and success for (old-school acts) as Rush, Neil Young, but not as big as in other countries .

What would be the potential challenges for Canadian artists in Holland? Nothing particular, although I think regular bands, in the alternative genre, will have to pay some attention and seek some help in promoting their shows, even in smaller venue, but on the other hand, online will help you out. If you are successful online in the Netherlands, you will sell your tickets as well.

What advice would you give to a Canadian act who wants to break the Dutch market? Go for it! Just go for it!

NEIGHBOURING RIGHTS: INTERVIEW WITH MARKUS BOS (SENA) Neighboring rights – which are related to the public performance of recorded music and paid to performers and musicians as well as record labels – are an important source of revenues for rights holders in the Netherlands .

These rights are collected and distributed by SENA, which collects about €70 million per year.

SENA was founded in 1993 to license the public performance of recordings and collect and distribute royalties to performing artists, musicians and record companies.

SENA works with Canada’s sister organizations Re:Sound and ACTRA PRS.

Markus Bos, CEO of SENA, explains the function of this organization and the importance of neighboring rights for the music community in the Netherlands.

42 Can you describe what SENA does? As a Music Licensing Company (MLC), we collect fees from companies and organizations that are playing recorded music in their business environment. We do this on behalf of artists, musicians and record companies. Our customers vary from national radio and television stations, to the local hairdresser who’s playing music in the barber shop. We serve over 170,000 customers generating a revenue of around €70 million per year. We represent more than 30,000 artists and labels in The Netherlands. For many of these artists and an increasing number of labels, we also collect abroad via our partners like PPL in the UK, SoundExchange in the US and CPRA in Japan. In Canada we collect from Re:Sound and ACTRA PRS .

What is the state of the neighboring rights in the Netherlands? Is the market healthy? Our revenues have grown at high speed since our inception in 1993. We separate two main income streams: broadcasting and public performance. Our market penetration in both segments is reaching its saturation point. In public performance licensing we have teamed up with our colleagues from the authors’ society Buma-Stemra with whom we already established a joint venture named Mijnlicentie.nl (Mylicense.nl) a decade ago. This type of collaboration has also been introduced in Finland, the UK, New Zealand and most recently in Canada through the launch of Entandem.

What are your goals at SENA? Our growth ambition is focused on tariff increases, primarily in broadcasting – radio and TV. Collections, however, are only part of our activities. Paying out monies to the rightful owners in a timely and efficient manner is equally important. Cost reductions that can be achieved here – also driven by closer international cooperation and standardization – will lead to an increase of net amounts which arrive in the bank accounts of performers and their labels. We therefore see ample opportunities to improve our service, which to a large extend will be driven by automation.

What are your main sources of revenue? Public performance generated €41 million in 2018, broadcasting revenues amounted to €21 million and international was around €8 million. Broadcasting also includes income from, for example, outdoor dance events and internet webcasters .

What challenges are you facing? Our main challenge is to seriously improve our broadcasting tariffs in general and the radio tariff specifically. Notwithstanding the gloomy projections which are made with regards to linear broadcasting, advertising revenues for radio have been soaring for the last six quarters in a row in the Netherlands . Another challenge for our sector is to jointly develop IT systems and create standards instead of developing standalone solutions per MLC on a national level. The neighboring rights sector is relatively young, so on a global scale there is significant growth potential for emerging organizations. The performers and rights owners with international repertoire whom we represent will eventually benefit from this as well.

How has the European Directive on Collective Management affected the way you operate? The legislation on the governance of collective management organizations already was very detailed, so when the EU Directive was published not much changed for the situation in The Netherlands. As a matter of fact, the Dutch legislation is more prescriptive on certain aspects than the EU Directive.

How much does SENA allocate to social-cultural projects, and who benefits from these funds? We are a so-called joint society. Our constituents are performers – artists and (session) musicians – and record companies. Together they fund a limited number of projects, amongst which a project called upstream music. This fund finances mid-career artists who aim to make the next leap forward. The performers on their side reserve three percent of their total income for social-cultural funds. Numerous festivals and music industry events are financially supported by SENA Performers. And for professional artists who are in the earlier stages of their career, the SENA Performers Music Production Fund co-finances recordings for artists. This fund is highly appreciated by the sector as nearly 200 applications were received in the last twelve months. In 2018, just under €3 million were spent on social- cultural activities .

43 How are Canadian artists and labels doing with regards to NR income in the Netherlands? Of course, Canadian superstars like Justin Bieber, Celine Dion, Bryan Adams and Chad Kroeger have good airplay in the Netherlands and are remunerated accordingly.

Should Canadian performers and labels register directly with you? We promote performers and rights owners to register with their local organizations. The landscape in Canada is somewhat more complex compared to Holland with Re:Sound mainly representing labels and ACTRA PRS, MROC and Artisti representing performers. For performers with an international fanbase it is crucial that their national organization is actively representing their interests abroad. For SENA that’s our second nature, we’re a relatively small country. However, in terms of collections from abroad we are in the top three worldwide.

How’s your relationship with Re:Sound? We have good collegial relations with Re:Sound . They are one of the four MLCs who are actively involved in the development of [repertoire database] RDx. They have also consulted us in relation to the establishment of the Entandem joint venture. Re:Sound is an active participant in the performance rights committee hosted by IFPI, as are we.

Do you have advice for Canadian performers and labels wishing to develop a presence in the Netherlands? We have two industry events in The Netherlands every year that serve as an excellent platform for both Dutch, European and global exposure . In January, Eurosonic is a great showcase festival which has a so called yearly revolving theme country. The festival invites bands from this country to perform whilst thousands of bookers from all over Europe are visiting Groningen for the event. Although the name implies that the showcase could only pertain to European entries, why not attempt to make Canada a theme country? The second yearly international event is Amsterdam Dance Event (ADE). ADE has become the leading gathering for industry professionals active in the electronic dance music segment. The Netherlands are the tenth music market globally, we were in the group of early adopters of streaming and by many business sectors, our country is regarded as the gateway to Europe.

REGISTERING WITH DUTCH SOCIETIES To collect the proceeds from the use of their compositions in the Netherlands, Canadian authors and composers can register directly with BUMA-STEMRA. However, most authors and composers have these rights collected through SOCAN or any other PRO they are initially signed to. However, many international music publishers opt to register directly with BUMA STEMRA or let their sub-publisher, if they have one, act on their behalf .

The same applies to SENA for neighboring rights. Performers or labels can collect their neighboring rights generated in the Netherlands through the collecting society they are affiliated to in Canada. However, labels often decide to register with SENA and give mandate to the society to collect neighboring rights on their behalf.

FIGHTING PIRACY: THE ROLE OF BREIN BREIN is the not-for-profit organization in the Netherlands (Stichting BREIN in Dutch) charged with protecting rights holders against infringement and piracy. Tim Kuik, managing director of BREIN, explains how his organization – whose tag line is ‘The Art Of Protecting The Creative’ – operates .

What is the function of BREIN? Who do you represent? The non-profit BREIN foundation takes care of the collective protection of copyright and neighboring rights for creators, performers and the creative media industry such as producers, publishers, broadcasters, distributors and platforms. Affiliated with BREIN are around thirty industry and collective management organizations and their members, together several thousands of companies and tens of thousands of creators in relation to music, movies, series, books, other writings, images (photos, paintings) and interactive software (games).

44 Can individuals join the organization? Under its bylaws and the civil code (art 3:305a) BREIN has the authority to represent all rights holders, except those who expressly opt out. Members of branche and collective management organizations also are participants in BREIN. BREIN pursues and litigates on infringement matters of collective concern which also can be matters concerning a single work if they concern a matter of principle that is essential to the collectivity of rights holders.

How do you operate? Are you working with the judiciary and the police? BREIN investigates piracy matters and issues civil summons which are pursued in court if no settlement can be reached. Settlement at least encompasses a cease and desist undertaking with penalty sum for future infringements and can include (partial) compensation of costs and possibly also damages, all depending on the circumstances of the case at hand. BREIN may report a case to the law enforcement authorities to be considered for criminal investigation and prosecution. In principle criminal action is available as a last resort only, conditions for consideration by the authorities are recidivism, illegal turnover of at least 100,000 euro per year or involvement of criminal organization

What is the state of piracy in the Netherlands? The proliferation of legal offer decreases the demand for piracy, yet ‘free’ remains attractive. It is expected that piracy will decrease to manageable levels once blocking becomes widely available.

In the era of streaming, has there been a change in the way creative content is pirated? Enforcement against structural forms of infringement is a continuing necessity. With respect to music streaming has given rise to stream ripping. Also there are large scale bad faith file-hosters with streaming content accessible through searchable sites that aggregate links to unauthorized content. These bad faith file-hosters or cyberlockers are charging users for high download speeds .

What are the challenges that you are facing? The Netherlands is attractive for hosting due to high quality infrastructure and low cost.This also attracts illegitimate operators. Some hosters are acting in bad faith as they profile themselves as bullet-proof hosters. Those companies tend to be registered offshore but the servers are located in the Netherlands. Their compliance with NTD [i.e. disconnecting] of illegal sites is very slow. Thus such sites are enabled to continue business seamlessly from another host. Another issue with both bad and good hosts is that they do not have reliable customer identity information. We believe a Know-Your-Customer obligation should be introduced for hosting providers, comparable to those existing for banks.

Have you had cases involving Canadian artists (if so who)? Our cases involve all popular content from all over the world, so also from Canada.

For more information, please also visit www.stichtingbrein.nl or www.breinfoundation.nl.

45 6 - MUSIC PROMOTION AND MEDIA IMPACT OF MEDIA The Netherlands has a very diverse media mix, with a powerful public broadcasting service for radio and TV, commercial radio and TV broadcasters, daily national and regional newspapers and a rich output of magazines, including in the music sector.

MEDIA STRATEGY The Netherlands is one of the most open countries in Europe to talent from anywhere in the world, thanks to a very agile and inquisitive music press, and to public radio stations that take chances with new talent.

However, the key breaker for music remains commercial radio in the Netherlands, in particular Radio Veronica (pop/ rock), and public broadcasters NPO Radio 2, which has an AC format. About a third of the audience is captured by the public sector .

Top 40 radio stations attracts the most audience, followed by oldies and pop/rock. As opposed to the US or Canada, formats tend to be less restricted and more open to diverse music genres, as long as they are popular with the audience .

Breaking in the Netherlands includes building a profile through press, getting airplay on public broadcasters’ radio stations, followed by commercial radio stations, and , cap it with appearances on TV shows.

A lot of alternative acts and EDM artists tend to by-pass radio, save for the specialized stations or shows, to focus on live appearances, which can generate social media activity and press coverage.

With streaming services now ubiquitous, the need for local distribution is no longer a pre-requisit to get traction, media coverage or radio activity.

However, it is recommended to work either with a local label or with local boots on the ground for promotional purposes. In the interview below, radio plugger Ingmar Jahn notes that since a lot of new music comes out every week, “if a song is not officially released in Holland, there’s less chance to get noticed.”

Unless signed to labels with full promotional services, the use of radio pluggers is widely recommended for artist with commercial potential. Hiring a PR to reach out to the press is also highly recommended.

TOP RADIO STATIONS Radio in the Netherlands consists of national stations, regional and local stations, with public and private broadcasters fighting for the audience.

VPRO Public radio has five national stations: news station Radio 1, CA station Radio 2, pop/rock station 3FM, classical station Radio 4 and oldies station Radio 5 .

On the commercial side, the Talpa group consists of Radio 538 (top 40), Radio 10 (oldies), Sky Radio (non-stop pop) and Radio Veronica (pop/rock). Another commercial competitor is Q Music.

46 THE ROLE OF RADIO: INTERVIEW WITH SANDRA JONGSTRA (RADIOMONITOR) Radio in the Netherlands has been traditionally open to all kinds of different music genres, and the trend continues . Due to its geographical position in Europe, Dutch listeners are as much influenced with what happens in the UK than in neighboring Belgium, Germany or Nordic countries.

However, the radio airplay market is dominated by music from three main countries: The USA, the UK and the Netherlands, which altogether account for some 80% of total airplay.

Sandra Jongstra, who runs the Dutch office of London-based airplay monitoring company Radiomonitor, outlines here the state of the country’s airplay.

What does Radiomonitor do? Radiomonitor monitors the music played on radio and TV in 97 countries. This airplay data is used by all major record labels, music broadcasters, media, PR and for royalty management. Access to this data is provided through a suite of online tools, via the Radiomonitor App, by emailed reports or through a custom data feed.

How many stations do you monitor in the Netherlands? We monitor all 40 Dutch national and regional stations, both public and private, as well as a sample panel of about 50 local city stations .

Are Dutch listeners interested in new music and new artists? Yes, I would say they are. Looking at a recent Top 5000 weekly chart, about 40% of the music is not older than 1 year.

How do Canadian acts do on Dutch radio? This year 2% of all plays on Dutch radio were from Canadian artists. Weighted with audience it is 2.2%. Putting this in perspective: US had 32% of all Dutch airplay, UK 25% and Netherlands 23%. So three countries make up for 80% of the total airplay in The Netherlands, leaving 20% for all other countries .

Who are the most played Canadian acts on Dutch radio? The most played Canadian artist in The Netherlands is Shawn Mendes, grabbing 25% of all Canadian airplay, weighted with audience. Second and third most played Canadian artist in The Netherlands are Bryan Adams and Michael Bublé, each with about 10% marketshare within Canadian airplay.

Has streaming and social networks changed the way radio is programmed? I think one genre that clearly became visible through social media and streaming – especially Spotify – is Dutch hiphop. A challenge for radio might be that youth tends to listen via streaming rather than regular radio and radio audience is therefor getting older .

How would you advise artists and labels from Canada to approach Dutch radio? I would advise them to approach the Dutch market either through collaboration with a Dutch label or with the help of an independent music promoter who knows the music programmers personally.

47 INTERVIEW WITH RADIO PROGRAMMER: MENNO VISSER (3VOOR12) Menno Visser is music programmer at 3voor12radio, a multimedia platform part of public broadcaster NPO group of stations, specialized in alternative music. As such he programs one of the most diverse playlists in the country.

NPO is made of ten broadcast organizations. 3VOOR12 is the pop music department of VPRO and operates two digital television channels, one featuring music videos and another focused on live music. 3VOOR12 is also responsible for the evening program on VPRO’s 3FM.

Can you describe the terrestrial radio market in the Netherlands? This year, 100 years of radio broadcasting in the Netherlands has been celebrated . Radio in the Netherlands started early helped by the light bulbs factories of Philips . Now the Dutch radio landscape has developed in a very diverse way. As The Netherlands is a relatively small country, most stations have licenses to broadcast nationally. Roughly a third of the radio market goes to public national radio VPRO, another third for the commercial media mogul John The Mol’s Talpa Group, and the last third for the rest, which includes Talpa’s biggest commercial competitor Q Music (owned by Flemish DPG Media), regional stations and amateur local stations.

Who are the key players (public/private radio)? The biggest station in the Netherlands with 12% marketshare is public station NPO Radio 2 (AC), despite efforts of the commercial stations to become the top player. NPO Radio 2 is so successful because at the end of the year it broadcasts The Top 2000, a list of the 2000 best songs of all time chosen by more than a million listeners. Commercial players Radio 538 (top 40) and Radio 10 (oldies) and Q Music (top 40) are currently at 10%, followed by Sky Radio at 8%. Then a big group follows with market shares of 3%-4%: Public stations NPO 3FM (pop/rock), NPO Radio 4 (classical), NPO Radio 5 (oldies) and commercial stations Radio Veronica (pop/rock) and 100% NL (Dutch music only).

What are the dominant programming trends when it comes to music? Top 40 is still the main format, followed by oldies and pop/rock.

Are Dutch listeners interested in new music and new artists? Historically, The Netherlands is an open society with a lot of trade with other countries. This reflects an open mind to interesting music wherever it comes from. The station that plays most new music first is public station NPO 3FM (pop/rock) which brings the slogan ‘music starts here’, although it has suffered a market share drop from 10% to 3%, because many famous DJ’s went to NPO Radio 2 or commercial stations from the Talpa Group.

Has streaming and social networks changed the way radio is programmed? Because of the popularity of Dutch-language hip-hop, radio has been trying to play more hip-hop, but this has been proven to be a different audience, so now streaming figures are less important to make programing decisions. Program highlights like live music sets by artists in the studio are heavily promoted by the stations’ social media outlets, and this has some influence on which records will be playlisted.

What makes 3VOOR12 different from other stations? We are always forward looking, broadcasting more edgy stuff.

What kind of music are looking for? It doesn’t matter which genre or if it is just a demo – as long as it is edgy and progressive, we are interested.

How would you advise artists and labels from Canada to approach Dutch radio? Canadian artists like Arcade Fire, Walk Of The Earth and The Weeknd are very popular on Dutch radio and sell out stadiums in The Netherlands. The most likely way into Dutch radio is still to hire a professional independent radio plugger to gain the attention from the program directors and DJ’s.

48 INTERVIEW WITH TOP RADIO PLUGGER: INGMAR JAHN Like with any other markets, the Dutch market requires boots on the ground to make things happen if you want to get traction. On the live music side, having an agent is paramount, but before even hiring an agent, an efficient way to get a foothold in the Netherlands is to start working with a PR specialist/plugger to start catching the interest of print media and radio.

Ingmar Jahn is an all-round music PR agent, who besides radio plugging, provides clients from both major and independent labels with extensive print/online and TV promotion as well. Jahn explains here how to approach the Dutch media landscape.

How did you start plugging? I used to run a small independent myself until I decided to become a full time radio plugger. This was in 2013. And I was lucky. The very first song I actually plugged was ‘Diamonds’ from British rock band The Boxer Rebellion. It became a big hit here in Holland.

What kind of music and artists do you work for? I’m mainly specialized in indie and alternative pop/rock related genres. But I do have experience with other genres too, like singer-songwriter, Americana and R&B. Artist I work for are – among many others – are Cage The Elephant, Death From Above, Half Moon Run, , City And Colour, Sunflower Bean, Wolf Alice, The Murder Capital, Pale Waves, Blossoms, and Everything Everything, but also Mabel and Jorja Smith who are typically R&B artists .

How would you describe the radio scene in Holland? The radio scene in Holland is quite diverse . There’s a great bunch of local, regional, online/digital, and FM radio stations. And every station does have its own music profile, which varies from modern pop/rock, to modern pop, to urban, to soul/jazz, to oldies, and to classic hits from the 80’s and 90’s. Depending on the genre of course, especially for rock related artists, Radio 3FM, Kink Radio, Pinguin Radio and Indie XL are important and relevant stations to start building new songs, and their profile when they’re just relatively new to the Dutch market.

Is there a big difference between public and commercial radio stations? There are definitely differences between public and commercial radio stations. The commercial ones usually focus on the big international and national artists, and mainly play the big hits that are positioned high in the local and international charts. They also pay a lot of attention to the number of Spotify streams. And there’s not much space on their playlists. So competition is huge. Obviously the situation at public and online radio stations is competitive too. But these stations, especially the ones I just mentioned, are more accessible and willing to help if the music is good, and the story/momentum are relevant and well-timed.

And once they’ve decided to be supportive, and the songs do get actual airplay, it’s worth to start pushing these songs to other stations, including the commercials ones, but only if the music does fit their music profiles of course. It is worth noting that even though there’s pretty much room for international artists on Dutch radio playlists, all Dutch radio stations are very supportive to domestic artists too. So, often Dutch artists do have the privilege of priority.

What kind of music is popular on Dutch radio nowadays? Since the Dutch radio landscape is pretty diverse, there’s room for all kind of music. But the most popular music played on the popular and influential radio stations are rock, pop, R&B/soul/urban/hiphop, and dance.

49 Is it necessary to have a release in Holland to get airplay in the country? Holland is considered to be a very important market in mainland Europe. What happens here in terms of trends related to radio support and live scene, many other countries do consider our market as a music guide. So, for many years Holland was and still is a stepping stone for international artists to start building their career here, and in Europe as a whole. With this in mind, I think it’s absolutely necessary to have a release in Holland. Also, there’s an enormous amount of new music coming out every week, so if a song is not officially released in Holland, there’s less chance to get noticed. And I think it’s a bad sign to Dutch radio stations if a song isn’t available in Holland. Why should they play and support a song that isn’t released here?

What kind of advice will you give to Canadian artists and labels that want to break the Dutch market? As already mentioned, the Dutch market is accessible, and Holland is an important player in the European music industry. However, and exceptions excluded, success doesn’t come overnight. So Canadian labels/artists should be prepared to be realistic in their goals, especially when introducing new artists to the market from scratch. Patience and a long term version are key for success. It’s all about building, and even with no or not much radio airplay in the first phase of a campaign, it’s good to keep focusing on radio. It takes time to get radio stations aware of new artists and music, and it requires dedication and commitment, also from the local teams, to get new artists/music on the radar from music directors and DJs. And as said before, when the music is good or does have great potential, and there’s a story and momentum to share, the music will be heard and played now or later.

Do Canadians need to go through a label or could they simply use the services of a plugger like you? They can go through a label or use the services of an independent plugger or independent service label . Either way, it’s important to do research, and find the ideal team for representing your label/artist/music. A good local team does understand the local market, is willing to help you to better understand the scene here, and knows how and where to build an artist, and push the music most effectively.

PRINT MEDIA Despite its modest size and population, the Netherlands has a very significant print media structure, with about ten national daily newspapers, some 20 local or regional dailies, and a huge variety of magazine.

Most of the print media companies are located in Amsterdam or Rotterdam. The total circulation of national dailies exceeds, 1.5 million copies, or about one daily per 10 inhabitants. Like elsewhere in the world, the circulation of dailies in the Netherlands has been declining, challenged by online access to news .

De Telegraaf, created in 1891, is the leading newspaper with a daily circulation of over 300,000 copies . Other influential dailies include Volkskrant (200.000), NRC (100.000), Trouw (100.000) and AD (300.000).

A complete list of Dutch national and regional/local newspapers, as well as news web sites, can be found here: https://www.w3newspapers.com/netherlands/

Most dailies mentioned above have music reporters or reviewers and feature reviews, profiles and interviews with artists. Dutch music journalists tend to have an encyclopedic knowledge and are not afraid to be opinionated.

Aside from specialized music magazines, there are dozens of magazines in the Netherlands covering almost every sector. Some do have a music section or interest in music and artists, depending on their focus. Women magazines such as Linda, Viva or Cosmopolitan also have some coverage of the music scene.

50 Music is relatively well covered with specialized magazines such as: Aardschok Magazine (founded in 1993) aarsdschok.com For metal fans, covering the various sub-genres, with a circulation of over 20,000 copies monthly.

Heaven Magazine (1999) https://www.popmagazineheaven.nl Pop and mainstream, with a focus on songwriters.

Hitkrant (1977) Focuses mainly on top stars and hits.

Lust For Life lflmagazine.nl Covers music with a focus on Rock acts, in the same mold as Uncut. Circulation is about 2,000.

Music Maker (1977) musicmaker.nl The magazine focuses on musicians.

Oor (1971) oor .nl Oor, with a monthly circulation of 20.000, is probably the most influential music magazine in the country, with a focus on mainstream and alternative music.

Websites such as .nl tend to cover the alternative scene, while puna.nl is more geared towards Hip hop.

To reach out to print media, it is advised to hire a PR expert who will identify the best journalists to contact, based on the type of music.

TELEVISION There is a mix of public and commercial TV channels trying catch the attention of the Dutch audience. Some 90% of the population has access to television via cable, with KPN and Ziggo being the largest cable operators in the country, alongside smaller operators such as Caiway, DELTA, Kabel Noord.

Public broadcaster NPO operates three channels – NPO 1 (full service with news, fiction, entertainment), NPO 2 (news, politics, art, culture, documentaries), and NPO 3 ( and youth programming) – and the commercial broadcaster RTL (part of Germany’s media group Bertelsmann) offers four stations – RTL 4 (news, entertainment, reality shows like Holland, games, dramas), RTL 5 (reality shows and imported dramas), RTL 7 (sports, movies, series, entertainment), RTL 8 (talk shows, soap operas, dramas, children). Other commercial broadcasters include Talpa TV, with channels such as Veronica (series, sitcoms, reality, comedy) and Net 5 (reality, factual, sitcoms, dramas for youth and male audiences).

Two satellite-distributed packages are available in the Netherlands: CanalDigitaal (part of France’s + group) and Joyne .

In addition, US broadcasters such as Disney, NBC, WarnerMedia, Viacom and Discovery broadcast multiple channels in the Netherlands. Viacom’s package comes with all the various MTV and VH-1 channels.

Music is rarely featured on prime time TV except through programs such as The Voice or Idols, the Dutch version of Pop Idol, both on RTL4 .

51 7 - BUSINESS AND SHOWCASE EVENTS IN THE NETHERLANDS The two main events/showcases for industry professionals in the Netherlands are the Amsterdam Dance Event, which has a focus on EDM, and Eurosonic Noorderslag, more focused on the live music sector.

AMSTERDAM DANCE EVENT The Amsterdam Dance Event is the autumn fixture in the dance music sector. The event combines conferences with some of the key players in the field as well as dozens of concerts, DJ sets and other musical performances in Amsterdam’s clubs. https://www.amsterdam-dance-event.nl/en/

EUROSONIC NOORDERSLAG Eurosonic Noorderslag is a conference and festival that takes place mid-January in Groningen, in the North of the Netherlands. It is the central point to meet the whole Dutch music industry (labels, publishers, agents, promoters, festival bookers) as well as a huge number of live music professionals from all around Europe and beyond. The festival itself only features up-and-coming European artists, so it will not be a way to highlight Canadian talent, but its networking value is very hight. https://esns .nl 8 - MUSIC INDUSTRY ASSOCIATIONS AND ORGANIZATIONS ABMD: The Associated Business Music Distributors, is the association of producers and distributors of background music, founded in 2004 by several professional background music distributors. It represents the major suppliers of professional background music (BCM Systems, DJ Matic, Eazis Music & Systems, Media Tools, PB Sound, The Music Marketeers, Xenox Music & Media).

BCMM: The Professional Association of Multimedia Dutch Music Export: Organisation in charge of Composers represents the interests of all Dutch film, TV, promoting Dutch music abroad. games, commercials, tunes and jingle composers. https://www.dutchmusicexport.com https://www.bcmm.nl/dutch-film-composers-dfc/ Dutch Performing Arts: It is a program that BREIN Foundation: Anti-piracy organization on promotes Dutch music, theatre and dance on the behalf of rights holders . international stage. The program is powered by the http://www .anti-piracy .nl Performing Arts Fund NL. https://www.dutchperformingarts.nl/ BUMA / STEMRA: Performance rights organization (BUMA) and mechanical rights society (STEMRA) FEMU: FEMU (Federatie Muziek Auteurs) is a joint collecting rights on behalf of rights holders (songwriters, venture between NMUV and VMN to monitor, enforce composers, publishers). and collect the proceeds from the use of sheet music. http://www.bumastemra.nl https://femu.nl

BUMA Cultuur: Organization financed by BUMA- Fonds Podiumkunsten: Main fundraiser for music, STEMRA in charge of supporting and promoting Dutch music theatre, dance, drama and festivals in The music. Netherlands, on behalf of the Dutch central government. http://www.bumacultuur.nl https://fondspodiumkunsten.nl/

The Dutch DJ Foundation: The DDJF was GENECO: The Society of Dutch Contemporary established in early 2015 to represent and promoting Composers (Genootschap van Nederlandse the interests of all Dutch DJs and producers . Componisten) is a professional association representing https://www.ddjf.nl the direct and indirect interests of Dutch composers. http://nieuwgeneco .nl/en/

52 Music managers Forum Netherlands: The Pop Coalitie: A cross-industry organization regrouping regroups the main artist managers in the country. most of the music industry trade bodies. https://www.mmfnl.com/ https://www .popcoalitie .nl

Nieuw GeNeCo: The New Society of Dutch SENA: Society in charge of collecting neighboring rights Composers (Nieuw Genootschap van Nederlandse on behalf of musicians, performers and record labels. Componisten) is a professional association that promotes http://www .sena .nl the direct and indirect interests of Dutch composers. http://nieuwgeneco .nl STOMP: Trade organization representing independent music labels in the Netherlands. NMUV: The Dutch Music Publishers Association . https://www.stichtingomp.nl/home https://www.nmuv.nl VMN: Vereniging van Muziekhandelaren is a trade NTB: The musicians’ union of the Netherlands. association for sheet music publishers and traders in the https://www .ntb .nl Netherlands . https://www.vmn.nl NVPI: The trade association of the Dutch entertainment industry. It represents most of the music companies VNPF: Trade organization regrouping most venues and (indies and majors), publishers of audiovisual content on festivals in the Netherlands . digital media and online publishers of games and other https://vnpf .nl interactive software . . http://www .nvpi nl. VOI©E: The trade association of Dutch collective management organizations for copyright or related rights Popauteurs.nl: Represents the interests of composers (Vereniging van Organisaties die Intellectueel eigendom and lyricists in many music styles (rock, pop, jazz, dance, Collectief Exploiteren) . , house, Dutch music, cabaret, etc.) https://www .voice-info .nl https://popauteurs .nl

9 - ADDITIONAL TOOLS AND RESOURCES GOVERNMENT - CANADA EMBASSY AND CONSULATES IN THE NETHERLANDS Canada’s Embassy in based in The Hague. Embassy of Canada Sophialaan 7 2514 JP The Hague The Netherlands Telephone: 31 (0) 70 311-1600 Email:[email protected] Site: www .netherlands .gc .ca

GOVERNMENT - THE NETHERLANDS CONSULATES + EMBASSY (CANADA) The Netherlands has an Embassy in Ottawa and consular offices in Calgary, Edmonton, Halifax, Montreal, Quebec, Saskatoon, , Vancouver and Winnipeg.

Link to the Netherlands Embassy in Ottawa: https://www.netherlandsandyou.nl/your-country-and-the-netherlands/canada/about-us/embassy-in-ottawa

Netherlands Embassy in Ottawa 350 Albert Street | Suite 2020 K1R 1A4 Ottawa, ON Phone: (+1)-613-237-50-31

53 Consular Section in Ottawa: Netherlands honorary consulate in Halifax Opening hours: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday: 1181 Hollis Street 8 .30 - 12 .00 hours . The consular section is closed on Halifax, NS B3H 2P6 Wednesdays . Phone: (+1)-202-240-76-23 For all consular services an appointment is needed. Netherlands honorary consulate in Montreal Consulate-general in Toronto 1010 Sherbrooke Street West 1 Dundas Street West Suite 2106 Suite 2200 Toronto, ON M5G 1Z3 Montreal QC H3A 2R7 Phone: (+1)-416-598-25-34 Phone: (+1)-514-284-23-22

Consulate-general in Vancouver Netherlands honorary consulate in Quebec Three Bentall Centre Suite 883 269 du Petit-Hunier Saint-Augustin de Desmaures PO Box 49068 Quebec, QC G3A 2J3 595 Burrard Street Phone: (+1)-418-880-00-59 Vancouver, BC V7X 1C4 Phone: (+1)-604-684-6448 Netherlands honorary consulate in Saskatoon 211 Wheeler Street Netherlands honorary consulate in Calgary Saskatoon, SK S7P 0A4 Investment Company Suite 600 Phone: (+1)-306-652-44-32 Lancaster Building, 304-8th Avenue SW, Calgary, AB Phone: (+1)-403-266-27-10

10 – REFERENCES The web site of the tourism office of the Netherlands: http://www.netherlands-tourism.com The article on the Netherlands in the Encyclopedia Bitannica: https://www.britannica.com/place/Netherlands Economic data about the Netherlands via the OECD: http://www .oecd .org/netherlands/ OECD’s Better Life Index in relation to the Netherlands: http://www .oecdbetterlifeindex .org/countries/netherlands/

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