Musicians

When you register for an Artist account you can create a profile that includes:

  • biographical details and a full discography (if not all the songs on all the albums)
  • links to where people can buy your music or go for more information 
  • a blog to keep fans up-to-date on what you're doing and where you're playing
  • a place to upload any or all of your own music for people to stream and/or download  
  • a Creative Commons licence that protects your rights to your music 

We encourage you to treat OIMA as a place to reach new listeners, especially from across Ontario.

We recognize that you may not want to put up all your songs on the archive, particularly if you're still selling albums online or at shows. We suggest you think about adding older material, live tracks, demos or b-sides, and maybe at least a song or two per album to give people a taste of who you are and what you sound like. And then you can link people to places they can buy your music or go for more information. 

In order to better protect your music you have the right to choose whether your songs will be available for stream-only, streaming and download, or a mix of both. Having at least some of your songs available for download means it's more likely to be played by campus and community radio programmers, who generally don't broadcast streams. 

For copyright reasons, all songs on OIMA must be original compositions or traditional songs in the public domain. This means no covers. You also must have recording rights to all the music you uploaded. We reserve the right to take down any music that doesn't meet this criteria. Read our terms of use.

To encourage the preservation of as much older music from Ontario as possible, Contributors also have the right to upload some songs. We have limited these uploads to music older than ten years to limit the possibility that artists are still actively selling it. All Contributor uploads are approved by a site moderator. And this music is only available to stream.

It is our hope that these public uploads will kickstart Contributors and Curators to become music detectives: seeking out artists, getting their permission to have that music (and maybe more) on the site for download as well as streaming, creating lasting connections between different genrations of musicians and music fans, as well as a stronger archive of Ontario's musical history. 

That said, please note that our terms of use clearly states that if an artist contacts us about removing any of their songs from the site we will do so. 

The site has a licence agreement with SOCAN. 

Click here to register for an artist account.

If you already have a Listener or Contributor account, you can click here to apply to have your account upgraded to an artist account.

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. 
 
Which is to say: use your best judgement. If an artist from Ontario self-identifies as being "independent" then once they sign the OIMA Artist Release you’re welcome to put their original music up on the Archive! (As long as it also abides by our terms of use, of course. Hey, and did I mention our terms of use?)