Hitesh Sharma (Tesher)
There is a moment during the Junos this year that will stick with me forever.
Tesher, a Regina product who's opening for Jason Derulo, on the outdoor concert stage during the Queen City Ex on Thursday, August 4, 2022 in Regina.
There is a moment during the Junos this year that will stick with me forever.
Tesher, a Regina product who's opening for Jason Derulo, on the outdoor concert stage during the Queen City Ex on Thursday, August 4, 2022 in Regina.
TROY FLEECE / Regina Leader-Post© Provided by Leader Post
I was performing Jalebi Baby with Simu Liu, and the crowd was singing along. About a minute into the performance, we exchanged a look, turned to the crowd, and broke into Bhangra dance . The smile on my face said it all: Pure joy.
That joy was tempered when I learned about Bill C-11, which will soon be voted on in the Senate. If passed as is, it could prevent digital-first Canadian artists from achieving that same success — and joy —I felt.
My musical journey started in my hometown of Regina circa 2008, a kid messing around on a computer mixing Bollywood songs with hip-hop tracks. I learned the music industry through trial and error because I didn’t have the money or connections that open doors. What I did have was determination and an Internet connection.
Eventually, I found TikTok. I loved the platform immediately and loved seeing people all over the world sharing, remixing and mashing up content. There are no gatekeepers on TikTok. If your content is good and engaging, it finds an audience.
Not only could I share my music with the world, but I could build a community that could engage with me and with my music. For a self-taught Indian kid from Saskatchewan, with no industry connections, TikTok was a game-changer.
While I’m Canadian, my music first got noticed outside of Canada. My first global hit Jalebi Baby includes the Indian influences of my childhood, but also hints of reggaeton, salsa, Middle Eastern drums and Eastern European synths.
I sing in Hindi, Punjabi and English. My music draws on global influences and musical traditions, so it benefited from being discovered globally.
My journey is less traditional than the typical path into the music industry, and there may have been no path for me at all without the access and freedom that come from being a digital-first creator. Those two things, access and freedom, simply weren’t available to artists like me — who don’t fit a certain mould.
And I’m far from alone. Some of the most exciting voices I’ve discovered in the last couple years, Canadian artists like Jessia and Johnny Orlando, have gained global followings and signed record deals, fuelled by their ability to reach a massive audience through TikTok.
Bill C-11 threatens that low-barrier path — one based on talent and audience preference, rather than government-established quotas — by subjecting platforms like TikTok and the creators using it to outdated broadcasting and Canadian content rules.
I’m building a career and exporting Canadian content globally despite those rules, not because of them. This path is what we should all want for Canadian artists. We want them to have the freedom to showcase globally our diverse, authentic, Canadian culture.
C-11 would limit that reach by requiring creators to prioritize government criteria for domestic distribution over making content optimized for global audiences.
Within a year of being produced, Jalebi Baby was streaming on multiple platforms, including Canadian radio. I collaborated with megastar Jason Derulo on the video, was nominated for breakthrough artist of the year at the Junos, and then, there I was, performing live.
The nomination was a huge honour, but to hit a Bhangra dance routine on national TV during Canada’s biggest music night was unforgettable. I could never have imagined seeing someone who looked and sounded like me on stage when I was a kid.
That’s why I’m eager to protect opportunities and offer inspiration to the next generation of Canadians making music or art tutorials or comedy sketches. Aspiring creators should have the same chance I did to live their dream.
Hitesh Sharma, known as Tesher, is a Juno-nominated musician and creator. His songs have been viewed hundreds of millions of times on TikTok.
Related
User content subject to 'some authority' by CRTC under Bill C-11, regulator says
I was performing Jalebi Baby with Simu Liu, and the crowd was singing along. About a minute into the performance, we exchanged a look, turned to the crowd, and broke into Bhangra dance . The smile on my face said it all: Pure joy.
That joy was tempered when I learned about Bill C-11, which will soon be voted on in the Senate. If passed as is, it could prevent digital-first Canadian artists from achieving that same success — and joy —I felt.
My musical journey started in my hometown of Regina circa 2008, a kid messing around on a computer mixing Bollywood songs with hip-hop tracks. I learned the music industry through trial and error because I didn’t have the money or connections that open doors. What I did have was determination and an Internet connection.
Eventually, I found TikTok. I loved the platform immediately and loved seeing people all over the world sharing, remixing and mashing up content. There are no gatekeepers on TikTok. If your content is good and engaging, it finds an audience.
Not only could I share my music with the world, but I could build a community that could engage with me and with my music. For a self-taught Indian kid from Saskatchewan, with no industry connections, TikTok was a game-changer.
While I’m Canadian, my music first got noticed outside of Canada. My first global hit Jalebi Baby includes the Indian influences of my childhood, but also hints of reggaeton, salsa, Middle Eastern drums and Eastern European synths.
I sing in Hindi, Punjabi and English. My music draws on global influences and musical traditions, so it benefited from being discovered globally.
My journey is less traditional than the typical path into the music industry, and there may have been no path for me at all without the access and freedom that come from being a digital-first creator. Those two things, access and freedom, simply weren’t available to artists like me — who don’t fit a certain mould.
And I’m far from alone. Some of the most exciting voices I’ve discovered in the last couple years, Canadian artists like Jessia and Johnny Orlando, have gained global followings and signed record deals, fuelled by their ability to reach a massive audience through TikTok.
Bill C-11 threatens that low-barrier path — one based on talent and audience preference, rather than government-established quotas — by subjecting platforms like TikTok and the creators using it to outdated broadcasting and Canadian content rules.
I’m building a career and exporting Canadian content globally despite those rules, not because of them. This path is what we should all want for Canadian artists. We want them to have the freedom to showcase globally our diverse, authentic, Canadian culture.
C-11 would limit that reach by requiring creators to prioritize government criteria for domestic distribution over making content optimized for global audiences.
Within a year of being produced, Jalebi Baby was streaming on multiple platforms, including Canadian radio. I collaborated with megastar Jason Derulo on the video, was nominated for breakthrough artist of the year at the Junos, and then, there I was, performing live.
The nomination was a huge honour, but to hit a Bhangra dance routine on national TV during Canada’s biggest music night was unforgettable. I could never have imagined seeing someone who looked and sounded like me on stage when I was a kid.
That’s why I’m eager to protect opportunities and offer inspiration to the next generation of Canadians making music or art tutorials or comedy sketches. Aspiring creators should have the same chance I did to live their dream.
Hitesh Sharma, known as Tesher, is a Juno-nominated musician and creator. His songs have been viewed hundreds of millions of times on TikTok.
Related
User content subject to 'some authority' by CRTC under Bill C-11, regulator says
YouTube, TikTok say Liberal online streaming bill fails to protect digital creators
OTTAWA — Online streaming giants YouTube and TikTok are asking Canadian senators to take a sober second look at an online streaming bill that they say would cause significant harm to Canadian digital creators.
YouTube, TikTok say Liberal online streaming bill fails to protect digital creators© Provided by The Canadian Press
TikTok executive Steve de Eyre said in a Senate committee meeting on Wednesday evening that the federal Liberals' Bill C-11 doesn't just fail to protect digital creators from regulation, but makes them collateral damage.
He said the Senate should more explicitly exclude user-generated content from the bill, which was designed to modernize Canadian broadcasting legislation and bring online streaming platforms into the fold.
Senators should also consider rules around how Canadian content is identified, he said, saying much of the content that Canadians create on TikTok wouldn't qualify as such.
The onus could end up on users to prove how Canadian they are, meaning that "established media voices and cultural voices" with more resources could end up at the front of the line, said de Eyre, who is the company's director of public policy and government affairs in Canada.
YouTube executive Jeanette Patell told senators that the bill gives far too much discretion to Canada's broadcasting regulators to make demands around user-generated content.
She said the provision that the regulator can consider whether someone has directly or indirectly generated revenue from the content would affect "effectively everything" on the platform.
"This is a global precedent," said Patell, who is YouTube's head of government affairs and public policy.
She warned that if other countries follow suit, Canadian creators, for whom 90 per cent of YouTube views come from outside the country, will have a harder time getting noticed.
"There's nothing like this in the world for open platforms. It really puts the international audiences of creators at risk."
Patell also warned that the regulator could require changes to the company's algorithms, echoing concerns that music streaming giant Spotify raised during a hearing last week.
That fear is based on committee testimony from Ian Scott, the chairman of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.
Scott told senators in June that the regulator could ask platforms such as YouTube to "manipulate" their algorithms to produce particular outcomes.
At a meeting last week, Spotify's head of artist and label partnerships for Canada, Nathan Wiszniak, said that affecting the way the platform generates recommendations for individual listeners would go against its raison d'être and could create negative feedback for the songs that are being recommended.
"Asking services to repeatedly bias recommendations against listener preferences strikes at the core trust we have built with our customers," he said.
Some Quebec senators pushed back on the idea that requiring an algorithm to nudge users towards Canadian content is such a bad thing.
Sen. Julie Miville-Dechêne said that the bill requires companies to choose the means to make Canadian artists discoverable.
"Do you have means other than an algorithm to promote Canadian content?" she asked Patell in English. "Why are you afraid?"
Sen. René Cormier, for his part, noticed during his own use of YouTube that the algorithm was recommending anglophone music to listen to after Quebec artist Ariane Moffatt, whom he repeatedly name-dropped.
"I'm trying to understand why you can't continue with the same type of music that I'm already listening to," he said in French. "Why am I led elsewhere in the recommendations?"
Patell said YouTube is about "You," and that its users train the algorithm to serve their needs — so she recommended that Cormier "teach" the platform what he's looking for. When Canadians come looking for Canadian content, she said, "we absolutely want to serve that to them."
Though de Eyre said that TikTok is "democratizing discoverability," Bernadette Clement, a senator from Ontario, pointed out that "it's not democratic if people don't know how algorithms work."
Patell and de Eyre responded by saying that their companies are making their source code and raw data available to researchers.
The streaming companies are recommending specific tweaks to the language of the bill that they say would assuage their concerns.
In June, before Parliament's summer break, the House of Commons passed Bill C-11 with more than 150 amendments. The Senate decided not to rush its passage and instead to take a more thorough look this fall.
If senators decide to amend the bill, it would have to be sent back to the House of Commons for approval before it can become law.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 21, 2022.
Marie-Danielle Smith, The Canadian Press
No comments:
Post a Comment