CMW’s annual gift to the future, the Canadian Radio Music Awards are considered a barometer of buzz in Canadian music. The hottest, newest names on the CanCon scene sing in front of the industry’s opinion-makers, and stake their claim to a place on the nation’s playlists. If you see them here, you’ll soon be hearing them everywhere!



Featuring live performances by nominated artists and special guests.


Hosted By:
K Trevor Wilson

Live Performances By:
The Reklaws
New City
Romes
Felix Cartel
River Town Saints

Audio is emerging as a critical branding consideration, especially as adoption of
smart speakers and ‘hearables’ – like smart headphones – gathers momentum.
Globally awarded audio marketing specialist Ralph van Dijk will present a fast-paced overview of this changing landscape and discuss the important role radio can play as brands seek to influence their customers’ hearts and minds, through their ears.

Radio Trailblazers and other Powerful Women in Broadcasting, Music and Interactive industries will reflect on their careers and share ideas on how to move from a hashtag to action. Women and men, whether they are in a management position or just starting out in their careers, will come away from this session with at least 3 ideas on what they can do right now in their organizations to build a better, stronger, more inclusive workspace. This discussion will be a roadmap to the future where women and men thrive to build better, stronger radio stations and creative industries. This panel is sponsored by Marketron and Slaight Music.

PRESENTED BY RADIO TRAILBLAZERS

National Radio Hall of Fame inductee Bobby Bones, talks about his radio career, including the failures along the way and how he turned them into successes. Plus he will discuss how to handle programming when unexpected or difficult news breaks.

Crimes, accidents, weather emergencies and “acts of God” can make your normal programming seem grossly inappropriate under the circumstances. In these events, your talent must live up to its name, reacting with intelligence and sensitivity, and responding appropriately on-the-fly. You don’t have a crystal ball and can’t plan for specific events. But management and staff can have a smart, practiced approach to dealing with the unexpected. This panel will examine instances where programming was rebooted in response to events, and how your staff can hone its reaction instincts.

Craig comes from an Australian radio culture where radio personalities are true media celebrities. So he thinks larger-than-life, which is exactly what we need to be doing in an era where everyone is competing for attention. Radio doesn’t just compete against radio, it competes against everything. Craig shows how radio shows and radio stations can think differently and position themselves to make an impact against global digital competitors.

It’s our annual gathering of some the most influential executives in global broadcasting. They know what’s going on, where the business is going, and what they intend to do about it. You’ve got questions and… well, some of the answers may be on a need-to-know basis. But we guarantee you’ll walk away with some pretty solid intel about the immediate and long-term broadcast picture.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the most talked about subjects in 2018. From virtual assistants to self-driving cars, it’s all around us. Now, AI has made its way to broadcast radio – from the studio to the traffic department, and from sales enablement to everything in between.

Join this session and learn firsthand from some of radio’s top executives, as they give an informative look at how AI is making them more competitive by quantifying the value of the spoken word and by transforming everything from airchecks, to on-air and online publishing.

This is the session you need to attend if you want to get the complete download on AI for radio.

The adoption of smart speakers in the home is driving an increase in use of voice assistants throughout the entire day, and that means that consumers are talking to brands—and those brands might not be ready to talk back. This session will examine the latest Canadian and U.S. studies on smart speakers from one of the leading researchers in the space, and examine how brands—and the audio industry-- must respond to what has become a very rapidly changing set of consumer behaviors.

Bob has given this talk to advertising, marketing, and media conferences all over the globe. It is based on his best-selling book of the same name. The talk explores the gap between how marketers think and consumers behave.

It focuses on three dangerous and costly delusions: The Digital Delusion, The Brand Delusion, and The Age Delusion. Each of these delusions start with a little bit of truth and then twist and torture the facts until they do marketers more harm than good.

With an armload of data, and a little bit of humor, Bob shows how over ten years of assertions and predictions by media, marketing, and advertising “experts” have cost marketers billions.

If you are not already skeptical about the pronouncements of marketing and media experts, you will be after this talk.

One’s over-the-air, one’s in the cloud. But traditional broadcasting and new-era podcasting have enough in common to suggest an overlap of approaches. Podcasts have entered the mainstream so forcefully, they have spun off into TV series and created their own star system. Traditional broadcasters would be wise to learn from their success and even adopt their best practices. This panel will be moderated by Matt Cundill, host of the hit Sound Off podcast, and will examine how podcast principles can work to your advantage.

One of our most popular and dynamic sessions returns, in which we assemble a panel of the top-ranked “Idea people” in broadcasting and start the clock. The target: 30 great ideas in 45 minutes. The goal: to assemble a quick framework of improvements to your station that can be easily applied, raising your game in look and sound. Take notes, because the ideas will fly.

Connected cars are introducing new tools for car makers and broadcasters to collaborate and compete more effectively with the A-Team: Amazon, Apple and Alphabet.
Understanding the onset of car connectivity and its impact will be essential to capitalizing.

Your station ID is like a Rorschach Test, a standard by which the very mention of your call letters should inspire a strong, positive image in listeners’ consciousness. In this workshop, we’ll bring station reps and image-makers together to run through the process of creating that identity and making it stick.

As music consumption transforms in the streaming age, radio must continually adapt to keep pace with changing listening habits. As the UK’s leading youth broadcaster, BBC Radio 1 is at the forefront of that transformation. In this fascinating talk, head of music Chris Price lifts the lid on how the network is evolving music discovery for radio.

It takes two sides to get a record on the air – and we’ve got both of them, demonstrating what they do best. In this session, some of the country’s most productive pitchers will submit new songs to the programming decision-makers at the country’s top stations, as well as to the BBC’s head of music. Before there’s a hit, there’s got to be a pitch. See how it happens here.