Music lovers

 

When you apply for a Contributor account you can create a profile that includes:

  • your personal bio  
  • links to other personal websites
  • playlists of the music you think other OIMA users should check out 
  • a blog to highlight the best of what you're finding on the site and about music in Ontario in general 
  • and eventually, the right to upload older music for stream only and get engaged as a music detective

For copyright reasons, all songs on OIMA must be original compositions or traditional songs in the public domain. This means no covers. To better protect the rights of musicians, all the music uploaded by Contributors must be at least ten years old and can only be streamed. The site also has a SOCAN licence. We reserve the right to take down any music when requested to do so by the artist or that doesn't meet our submission criteria. Read our terms of use. 

What counts as music from Ontario? 

A song is considered Ontarian, and suitable for OIMA, if it meets any one of the follow criteria:

  • the artist or majority of artists comprising the group that created the song were born in Ontario
  • the artist or group are currently based in Ontario (and have been for at least six months) and the song was recorded during their time in Ontario
  • the artist or group previously lived in Ontario for at least five years and the song to be archived was recorded during that time  

What counts as independent music? 

This is like asking people what it means for something to be "cool" or how to define good taste:  there is no universally accepted definition. The most basic definition of an independent musician is based on whether or not the musician is signed to one of the major, corporate record labels: Universal, Sony BMG, EMI and Warner Music Group. If you're not, then you’re independent! 
 
To others, being an independent musician has nothing to do with record label affiliation but is more of an ethos about the way music is created and shared.
 
The 2006 Canadian film What is Indie? A look into the world of independent musicians explores what it means to be an independent
musician through artist and industry representative interviews. It concludes that being an independent musician “refers to a philosophy based on a proactive approach to one’s career; retaining complete artistic control to maintain the integrity of one’s art, regardless of record label affiliation.” Sounds good to us. 

Click here to register for a contributor account.

If you already have a Listener account, you can click here to apply to have your account upgraded to a contributor account.