Authors: Chizitere Ogbonna-Onugha
The Community
Music has been around for millennia and it is constantly evolving. Kamloops is no stranger to this music evolution as there are many aspiring musicians scattered around the city who create a lot of diverse music like pop, hip-hop, and afrobeats. Stay Media helps to get these musicians noticed by music lovers around Kamloops and BC as a whole by putting on shows, jam sessions, and letting people come into their studio to get their music professionally recorded, mixed, and mastered.
As an aspiring musician myself, I am glad to have heard about them and the support they try to provide. I attended a show they had at the end of February and was introduced to many new music artists I had not heard of prior, like Heavy Jay, and I got to see some musicians I was familiar with, but had not seen a live performance of before, like Ziri
Another way that Stay Media helps musicians is by occasionally interviewing them to get their stories into the world, or just to know them better as people, because in these interviews the musicians get to talk about things like the shows they’ve played, some of their favorite songs, or their thought process whenever they are creating music.
One can also see it as giving the musicians the a small taste of the industry, because they would do a lot more of these types of interviews if they were bigger names in the music community.
Stay Media officially launched on the 11th of January 2023, and it is inspiring to see how much they have been able to do in the music community after just two short years of operating in terms of organizing shows, reaching out to artists, and getting the local music lovers interested in their ventures. They only hope to reach even more fans in the coming years and get more aspiring musicians the professional sound that record labels are looking for in order to get signed.
The Opportunity
I am proposing this jam session as a way to get musicians and music lovers in or around Kamloops to come together and create music. This can also give people who are inexperienced but interested in creating music a hands-on experience with the process. Jam sessions like this happen occasionally in the studio, but turning it into a small tourism event might be a bit different, but the basics of it should remain the same.
The Experience
The Event would be a 3-hour event from 6PM to 9PM
6:00 PM: Tour of the studio and equipment. First-time visitors would know where everything is, and inexperienced people can get familiar with how to work the sound equipment.
6:30 PM – 6:45 PM: Tour is done and everyone gets their instruments of choice, which would have been decided beforehand, as well as the songs of choice. The people who don’t play instruments can just sing along with the others.
6:45 PM – 8:00 PM: Jam session. Everyone starts to play while the sound engineers record the music. There would be breaks after each song for the participants to get water or use the washroom while the engineers save the project file and open a new one for the next song.
8:00 PM to 9:00 PM: The participants would socialize with each other and the stay media team, which would give the audio engineers time to mix the music that was just made so the participants can have a recording of the jam session to take home.
Eating before this event is strongly suggested because it would not be safe to bring food and drinks near the equipment and electronics in the studio.
The studio can comfortably hold about 20 to 30 people without it being too crowded, but this event would only be for 15 people
Budget
Below is a budget to estimate the cost of everything
- Venue: $120 ($40 per hour for 3 hours)
- Ticket price: $30 per person for 15 people. This helps to cover the cost of the space, and any profits can go to the stay media team for advertising, maintenance, or anything else they would need.
The Small Tourism Effect
The jam session is a good example of small tourism because it gives both visitors and residents the opportunity to have a firsthand experience in making music.
Everyone is a fan of music in some way, so visitors would have a reason to come into the city because there is an opportunity for them to listen to local music and possibly play if they are interested.
This can also be a good networking opportunity for everyone involved. Not only would the music fans be introduced to a few new artists, but the musicians would find new people to collaborate with to help them grow their brand, strengthening the Kamloops music community.
Furthermore, it can give Stay Media some well-needed exposure as a local organization, and the revenue from the ticket sales can be used for advertisement to further get their name and vision into the world.
