Canadian Music Week Rebranded As ‘Departure Festival + Conference’

Departure Festival + Conference To Debut In Toronto May 6-11

Key figures in the Toronto music industry came out Nov. 12 to Toronto’s Hotel X to see how Loft Entertainment and Oak View Group (parent company of Pollstar and VenuesNow) are taking long-running industry conference and festival Canadian Music Week into the future.

Even CMW founder Neill Dixon, who has been consulting with its new owners since the sale of the 42-year-old Toronto-based industry event announced in June at CMW, came out from “retirement” to attend the party, where he was told he would be honored next year with a much-deserved lifetime achievement award.

The announcement was a coming-out party for the newly named Departure Festival + Conference, described as Canadian Music Week reimagined, along with its logo — an airplane wing viewed from the window or is it a road to discovery?

The inaugural Departure will take place at Hotel X, on the grounds of Exhibition Place and a stone’s throw from Lake Ontario, May 6-11, 2025.

Arena-status Canadian comedian Russell Peters kicked off the presentation, before handing off hosting duties to eTalk television’s Traci Melchor, who facilitated the speakers and conducted short interviews onstage.

Loft Entertainment co-founder and CEO Randy Lennox, executive producer Kevin Barton, and chief operating officer Jackie Dean and OVG Canada president Tom Pistore all shared their vision of Departure, which includes the tagline “music.art.comedy.tech.”

The artist showcase application opens on Nov. 22, the same day early bird conference passes go on sale at on departureto.com.

With some questions still lingering, VenuesNow followed up with Barton for more details.

Pollstar: After a 42-year history, why the name change and expansion into other verticals? 

Kevin Barton: The name had limitations. If we want to put on a festival or a conference the way that we had envisioned, it would expand to what today’s artists are facing: global. The world has become so much bigger and these artists are so multidisciplinary. Although they’re Canadian, they wave the flag from all different parts of the world. 

We’re going to keep “CMW reimagined” for the first while because we don’t want to alienate those who have put in all the effort. We still believe that the name carries weight and the name carries certain passion and we want to honor that. We’re not abandoning what this thing was built on. We’re just trying to bring it to a different space. Today’s space is the word I like to use. 

Randy mentioned “all roads lead to music.” How will you incorporate other elements like comedy, art, tech and food? 

There’s a bit of cross-sectionality depending on the vertical. We’re not going to span out to the things that aren’t related to “the business of entertainment and tech.” Comedy, however, branches to both. We talk about podcasting; I could call it audio entertainment. You’ll see that incorporated within the conference, but the shows and some of the programming will stand alone as just comedy shows.

We did a lot of the research and we looked at what we could accomplish in year one. We didn’t want to be everything to everybody. But the one thing that we did want to do is to understand that when hosting the conference and festival, it’s happening in Toronto.

We understand that Toronto’s food and culinary market is a reflection of who we are as Torontonians. It’s one of the most vast and diverse food scenes in the world. 

So, adding “food,” doesn’t mean Departure will have culinary workshops, keynotes and panels?

No, but we do have some people in the culinary arts right now that we are speaking to that we believe are at that cross-section of popular culture and roots also in music, and we want to bring those people to the stage. But once again, we believe that it’s still tied within our brand. We know a lot of these chefs now are rock ‘n’ roll stars themselves. They’re part of the conversations that are happening in and around entertainment and music. We want to stay true to our roots, so it all ties back to having someone that fits with our brand ethos. We’re programming with that in mind.

We swing at a lot of things and you don’t want to be everything, so we want to take our time in growing into these spaces and see what works. We don’t assume that we’re gonna have it all right year one, but we do have to test it to see do these audiences work together? Is the user experience working together? Do these things make sense to scale together? But this is a conference rooted in music, and, as we expand, because musicians and music is so multidisciplinary, like you said, it ends up in video games. Most chefs are playing music while they’re cooking. It’s a part of every art.

And even though your tag is music.art.comedy.tech, there’s nothing preventing you from having a fashion brand panel or keynote on gaming or sports?

Yeah. That being said, let’s think of it in context. How many artists do we know own clothing brands? We’re looking to have a clothing drop that week. We’re also really leaning in on social causes. Many artists represent charities. We want to be able to highlight those within the conference too. When I say artists, we’re not just talking about musicians; I’m talking about makeup artists, creative directors, editors, film directors. Artists span so many things now. I want to make sure that they understand we can be in all these places and program effectively: Which conversations make sense to be having this year? 

Departure, of course, still has the music festival. What ratio are you planning for in terms of baby bands/unsigned bands, and also from outside Canada? 

I wouldn’t be able to give you an idea of ratio. Live Nation are one of the partners we’re working with. We are still making sure that the breadth of programming is consistent with allowing Canadian artists to be featured, smaller artists, mid-artists, and some of the bigger ones, and then making sure that the mix of people performing is diverse and inclusive. We want rock ‘n’ roll, we want hip-hop, we want electronics, we want South Asian; we want to make sure that it’s a reflection of Toronto and the culture that’s here.  We want to show that to the world, that this is a conference that is more globally-minded in the sense that we want to be able to feature all the different kinds of music and the mosaic of Toronto.

OVG is Loft’s partner on this. How are they helping you launch? 

Because of OVG’s expertise in the space — they know venues; they know entertainment; they know how to host — they bring that whole idea of how that happens. Their partnership team that works with the partnership development, as we start to scale this conference, the relationships they have and the idea of executing in spaces, they know that and that’s such an amazing part to add to this team. 

Stand-up comedy might be even harder to break into than music. Will you have panels geared toward that? 

Yes, for sure. We’re having discussions internally and externally. We have an entire programming team right now that are looking at everything in the space. “What do people need to hear about right now? What do they need to learn?” Those are the two things. 

We have some pretty big tech conferences in Toronto  (Blockchain Futurist), some are even music tech (IMSTA Festa), but Collision (held across from Hotel X at Enercare Centre), which is massive, moved to Vancouver for next year. Long-running comedy festival Just for Laughs just went bankrupt. Does that open up possibilities to nab those sponsorship dollars or is it more “uh-oh, it’s a tough market.” How do you view it?

Because Toronto is the No. 1 city for touring on the planet — I believe 84% of all the major tours pass through Toronto, No. 2 would be England and then Chicago — it shows you that the audiences in Toronto support music and they support the arts, more importantly. That’s why conferences like this can reach scale here.  So when you see festivals that either struggle or have left for whatever the reasons, I only see it as opportunities, opportunities for us to grow into spaces that we believe audiences are there. It’s just about having to find those communities and nurture them effectively and properly.