By Tabassum Siddiqui
For Vivian Barclay, a career in music seemed almost inevitable, given her background as a classically trained musician, growing up with both parents in the arts – her father was a working musician, while her mother was a fine-art painter.
But the path to her career as a leader in the Canadian music industry over the past three decades was anything but straightforward, with plenty of twists and turns along the way, Barclay says.
“I was around music and art very early and then went on to a degree in Radio and Television Arts at Ryerson University (now known as Toronto Metropolitan University),” she explains. During that time, she got her start working at community radio station CKLN, where she held key roles as Program Director and Station Manager, while also stepping in as an on-air host.
Working with the late industry trailblazer Denise Jones at her Toronto-based event and entertainment company Jones & Jones Productions, Barclay learned about managing artists and promoting live events. Those insights would serve as a cornerstone throughout her career as she continued to champion artists and their songs when she went on to work at Warner Chappell Music Canada – where she spent more than 23 years before leaving earlier this year to start her own boutique company, Hot House Songs.
“I’ve worn so many different hats, but music is the only business I’ve ever been in,” she notes.
Starting out in a temporary royalties role at Warner Chappell in 2001, Barclay quickly moved into a full-time position in copyright.
“I came to publishing almost by accident – Denise had a few artists who were signed to Warner Chappell, and I was recommended by her to the company because they needed help during the time I was working with her,” Barclay recalls.
“Of course, I knew about songwriting, but I hadn’t worked with a publisher until that point. But once I was there and had a better understanding of what music publishers did and what role they played in the ecosystem, then I became much more interested in it, and made a concerted effort to pick that as a career.”
At Warner Chappell, Barclay worked with a wide roster of Canadian songwriters, including Barenaked Ladies, Jully Black, Saukrates, and Simple Plan, and signed global artists like Machel Montano, Patoranking, and TOBi. She also oversaw the administration of the company’s global catalogue, including Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Katy Perry, Radiohead, and many more.
In 2008, she was named General Manager of Warner Chappell Music Canada, which made her the only Black General Manager working in the Canadian music industry – and one of the very few women in such a role at the time.
As she continued to blaze a trail in the industry, Barclay lent her voice and expertise to strengthening music publishing in Canada, including as a director on multiple industry boards, including CMRRA, CMPA, CARAS, MusiCounts, and SOCAN.
Reflecting on CMRRA’s 50th anniversary, she recalls having a front-row seat to many of the challenges and changes that marked the music-publishing space over the years.
“I was very grateful for the opportunity to be part of CMRRA’s Board. That role allowed me to take part in some real industry-building and to be a part of helping to bring some innovation, as well as better deals and generating better royalties for writers and publishers,” Barclay says.
“And with CMRRA being comparatively smaller to other similar associations around the world, it’s been great to see the kind of things they’ve managed to do over the years. With the support of the publishers and songwriters, CMRRA has always been able to let the global industry know that Canada is a viable territory that punches well above its weight.”
Part of that trajectory was when U.S.-based SoundExchange joined forces with CMRRA in 2017, a partnership that allowed both to work independently and serve their existing customers while also collaborating to share core services.
“Sometimes when these things happen, a company can get swallowed whole, but the fact that SoundExchange was willing to understand that Canada was different and that they took the time to understand the marketplace and work well within it, was very important for us to see,” Barclay says.
Another formative strength, she adds, was the way CMRRA dealt head-on with the challenges facing the music industry over the past few decades – long before digital disruption reared its head, but then also in the thick of that transformation, Barclay notes.
“In the early days, there were a lot of manual processes, so to jump to digital was so dramatic for the whole industry – especially for those of us that really delved into admin. To go from hundreds of pages of statements and thousands of line items and figuring out, ‘How do you analyze that and ensure everybody’s being paid properly?’ It was all a big puzzle,” she says.
“But the fact that CMRRA was able to come up with systems that were market-leading solutions, and show songwriters and the music sector that we can do this in a world-class way, was eye-opening. I watched that whole evolution from where it was still a very manual thing to the time when I left the board and we were in full-fledged digital mode – not just selling downloads, but streaming also – entire new industries and companies coming online, and a big shift within a short period of time.”
As Managing Director of Warner Chappell at the time, another big shift Barclay observed was how organizations such as CMRRA began to put music publishers on the map.
“For the longest time, everybody looked at the labels as the only place to go to discuss anything related to music and songwriting, but we began to see a shift into an era where music publishers were at the heart of ensuring the licensing of their own rights – a very significant change.”
Looking ahead, Barclay sees artificial intelligence and other rapid changes in technology putting pressure on the music sector, including music publishing, but she’s optimistic about both CMRRA’s future and her own new venture.
“I think everyone is having to take a look and understand where collective management is going – is it going to get more splintered? Or will we have more mergers or deals where people do things together, because that’s what the market is asking for? Every type of business – not just the music or entertainment business – is feeling the crunch of how to do things in a more efficient way,” she points out.
“But I think it’s going to come down to how organizations, or music publishers or companies, find solutions to these challenges. CMRRA has always embraced change and planned ahead, and I know they’ll continue to do just that.”
Barclay continues to work closely with CMRRA and other music-sector organizations as President and co-founder of ADVANCE, Canada’s Black Music Business Collective. As one of the leading Black music executives in the country, Barclay has been a groundbreaking visionary in the industry, promoting Black music and songwriters throughout her career and paving the way for more representation in the sector (recognized through several major industry awards, including Billboard Canada’s influential Women in Music list).
“Black music around the world continues to be some of the most dominant music that there is,” she says. “And oftentimes we’re not at the table when decisions are being made about our music, intellectual property, and descendants of the people who are part of that community. So, whenever I’ve had the opportunity to be in the room, I always tried to take it.”
She’s excited to continue advocating for Black music in developing Hot House Songs, both in Canada and beyond.
“Now I’m a publisher who’s probably not going to sign lots of different things like I did when I was at Warner. The point of a big company is to try to have your hand in a lot of different things – songwriters who are artists; songwriters who write for lots of people; songwriters who are doing big pop records; or songwriters that are more niche. You’re trying to be as wide as possible when you’re a major, but starting out with my new company, I may actually be going the other way,” she explains.
“I’m going to focus on the communities from the Caribbean but also around the world. I will be digging into the crate, so to speak, of the people and places that I know best, which have not necessarily been served by traditional record labels, publishers, mainstream radio, or any of those things,” she adds.
While music fans can now access any type of music from around the globe with a swipe on their phone, and cities like Toronto – with their hugely diverse populations – are ripe for new sounds, driving discovery of emerging genres or territories remains a challenge.
As someone who’s tackled more than her fair share of issues over the years, she’s more than ready to take this one on, Barclay says with a laugh.
“What are people in other countries listening to? What are they being influenced by? What are their audiences looking for? And how do we bring forth the collaboration needed to ensure we can share this music? Sometimes as publishers, we look at collaboration as this massive thing, but we don’t know if it will work until we try.”
As she begins a new chapter in her storied career, Barclay reflects on CMRRA’s legacy – and her part in helping shape its history.
“I was very honoured to have been able to be part of the organization – especially because I was the only person of colour at the table during that time,” she notes.
“CMRRA has always had the best interest of creators and music publishers in mind, and were always trying to be best in class at what they did – and I think that is going to be their longstanding legacy not just within Canada, but the whole publisher community.”
