Jon Weisz, a fourth-year management student at McGill, leads a double life. By day he studies entrepreneurship and marketing, and by night he's the founder and creative director of Indie Montreal.
No stranger to the local music scene, Weisz began his career as a party promoter in high school and continued doing it through CEGEP. "Party promotion sucks … I decided that I didn't want to do that because it's a really shitty job," says Weisz. "You're dealing with a lot of shitty people, a lot of sketchy people."
Deciding that party promoting wasn't for him, Weisz sought out something more fulfilling. Noticing the gap between promoters pushing esoteric, "indie" music, and promoters of popular, mainstream artists, in 2008 Weisz founded Indie Montreal, a music promotions company. When he started doing shows with his musician friends, his business really began to take off.
"I can't offer $10,000 guarantees to touring artists, so Indie Montreal can only grow so much, but people seem to be down with what I do," says Weisz.
Weisz explains that Indie Montreal targets two main demographics. "Montreal artsy hipsters like the Mile Enders [and] students who like the idea of indie music but don't really know much about indie music. They decide that when they hear from someone that a great band is playing … they decide they want to go see it. The whole concept of indie music seems really attractive right now because of what is going on in the music industry," says Weisz. "It's not really about the music as much as it is about the indie image."
Keeping this in mind, Weisz developed the idea of Discover Indie, a two-month-long music festival. "[It] brings in really top indie bands from Canada and the States who have found really great niche markets, like indie markets, and are really well recognized in indie circles but haven't yet found a really big mainstream draw or following," says Weisz. "In layman's term, bands that would play Sala Rossa instead of Metropolis."
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