Canadian Musician had a major presence at Canadian Music Week 2018 in Toronto, covering panels and keynotes, taking in showcases, and making connections across the conference.

Of course, we also had a chance to catch up with some of the biggest and best artists performing throughout the event, including: Marianas Trench, Bif Naked, Shawn Hook, Ria Mae, FrancisGotHeat, Kandle, Jesper Kyd, and Sophia Radisch.

Here, we share some short clips from the full interviews, discussing a myriad of diverse subjects like songwriting, live performance, beat production, landing endorsement deals, and more. You can find these full interviews and many others on Facebook at Facebook.com/cdnmusician or our YouTube channel at YouTube.com/norriswhitney.

Artist interview times:

Shawn Hook - 2:40

What if you could own more than just a CD or digital download from your favourite artist? What if you, as a fan, could invest in a percentage of that artist's intellectual property, and share the revenue generated by the performance and playback of their work? That's the idea behind Vezt.co, a platform that lets fans share ownership in songs by their favourite established and emerging artists.

Steve Stewart is a music industry veteran. As the longtime personal manager for Stone Temple Pilots and a consultant that helped inked deals for a host of other artists, he's got a unique perspective on the business and used his experiences to co-found and develop Vezt. Here, he shares his thoughts on the music publishing model as it exists now, how Vezt could change that model for artists and fans, and more.

Suba Sankaran is pretty busy these days. In addition to a successful career as a performer with acts including Autorickshaw, Retrocity, and FreePlay Duo, she's also the co-artistic director of Sing! The Toronto Vocal Arts Festival.

On this week's show, Suba joins Andrew to talk about the rising popularity of vocal music thanks to the success of media like Glee! and Pitch Perfect and artists like Pentatonix and Eh440. We also get into the unique nature of this increasingly popular but still remarkably tight-knit and collaborative musical community. Plus, hear how the 2018 edition of Sing! is coming together, and some of the innovative new artists and ideas to take in.

We had a wide-ranging conversation with Kevin Breuner, the VP of marketing for CD Baby and an independent musician himself. Since its inception 20 years ago, CD Baby has grown to become one of the largest distributors of independent music in the world and encompasses everything from CD and digital distribution to publishing, marketing, YouTube monetization, sync licensing, and direct-to-fan sales.

Kevin and Mike look at the current state of the independent music industry, talking about how streaming can be helpful for unsigned artists and whether the common criticisms of Spotify are fair, how Netflix is changing publishing, why downloads are dying faster than CDs, Facebook's music plans, and much more.

Ahead of the first-ever Canadian Music Week Hackathon (May 8-9, 2018), Mike sat down for an in-depth conversation with music hackathon producer, tech expert, music industry consultant, entrepreneur, and investor Travis Laurendine. Travis explains how hackathons work and shares some of the best ideas and inventions he's seen come out of them. Mike and Travis then get into a forward-looking (and mind-bending) conversation about how bleeding-edge technologies - from blockchain and artificial intelligence to virtual and augmented reality - could radically change how music is made and the industry that supports it.