That Eric Alper

Canadian Music Week is pleased to announce David Farrell as the 2018 inductee to the Canadian Music & Broadcast Industry Hall of Fame. David Farrell will be honoured for his achievements and longstanding career in the music industry at the annual Canadian Music and Broadcast Industry Awards Gala Dinner at Rebel Nightclub in Toronto on Thursday May 10th, 2018.

For more than four decades, David Farrell has chronicled the ups, downs, triumphs, disasters and constant changes that make Canada’s music industry a roller coaster for its participants.

Canadian Music Week President Neill Dixon says, “David and I go way back before the beginnings of Canadian Music Week where we built the foundation of what was to become Canada’s largest and longest running new music festival and conference. David has always had a strong voice in the music industry, especially when it comes to delivering to the latest and most important news. I am very excited and honoured that David is being inducted into the 2018 Canadian Music Industry Awards Hall of Fame at CMW, the event that he helped start.” –

Everyone involved in Canadian music – artists, managers, radio programmers, DJs, club bookers, concert promoters, publicists, stage and road crews and dozens more – relies on the site for accurate information on a day-to-day basis.

And for the last 10 years, Farrell’s daily website, FYImusicnews.ca, has filled that function. Thousands of music professionals visit the website daily and subscribe to the newsletter, religiously reading it three times a week. And they learn who’s got a new job, what songs are being played, what concerts sold out, which record companies – or retail chains or music festivals – succeeded and which failed, what memories from the past still run true today, which trends (technical and otherwise) are ascendant and which aren’t – and close to a half-million words a month of news and views and facts and opinions…

They used to say, back in the day when print was king, that people like David Farrell had printers’ ink in their veins.

Now that he’s being honoured with his induction into the Canadian Music Industry Hall of Fame, Farrell becomes – in a rare moment – reflective.

“I’ve been blessed to have friends who care for me dearly and a life that’s been illuminated by people who in large or small measure have made changes in the world we live in. Being honoured by my peers in this way is beyond anything I could or would have asked for, and I’m grateful for those who have appreciated what I have done. It’s wonderful to be rewarded with an acknowledgment that my crazy life has, after all, meant something to the community that I’ve tried – for all these years – to serve in a meaningful, consistent way.”

David Farrell pauses and looks a little uncomfortable, glancing back at more than four decades of writing about the Canadian music industry.

“Information is knowledge, knowledge is power, and power makes the world go round. I’ve no idea who said that first, but I’m claiming it.”