The East Coast Music Association, responsible for the annual East Coast Music Awards, is facing another wave of backlash for allegedly underpaying artists and for their antiquated bylaws. This time, it comes from its former CEO.
Blanche Israël, an accomplished musician and artist manager, was appointed CEO of the ECMA back in February 2024. This leadership change wouldn’t last long, as Israël was dismissed at the start of 2025 for what the ECMA noted in a press release as “serious risks to the (East Coast Music Awards) event.” They would posit that these risks included a lack of institutional knowledge, decisions made without board approval, and legal risks.
Following Israël’s firing, the organization faced scrutiny from its membership and the broader public for its awards nomination process, which had changed under Israël to focus more on cultural impact and less on streaming numbers and economic success. They had also been criticized for their lack of clarity in some of the genre classifications in their awards show.
Most of all, artists took to social media to lambast the ECMA for the organization’s lack of transparency, whether it be around the changes made under Israël, or the reasons behind Israël’s dismissal. This led to several artists skipping out on the annual awards in protest, including nomination front-runner Jeremy Dutcher, among others. Dutcher specifically told CBC, “It’s important for us as artists to speak together and start to ask questions of an organization that purports to support and speak for us.”
Months after the 2025 East Coast Music Awards, which took place in St. John’s, NL, from May 7-11, Israël resurfaced on social media to share details about the ECMA’s alleged mismanagement. In two videos posted to Instagram—one on Aug. 21 and another on Aug. 24—she outlined issues with the ECMA’s 2024 audited financial statements and board bylaws that she believes reveal a non-profit in decline.
2024 financial statements
Audited financial statements ending in August 2024 were provided to The Coast and verified by the East Coast Music Association’s new executive director, Bob Hallett. They show the ECMA’s total revenue by August 2024, which would have been after their ECMA ceremonies in Charlottetown, totalled around $1.65 million. This includes $760,000 in government funding, $371,000 in sponsorships, $233,000 in industry support and $135,000 in event tickets and merchandise. Notably, they also made $20,437 from membership fees and $21,236 from application fees. Artists need to file an application with an associated fee to be considered for an award or to participate in the ECMA showcase, according to Israël.
Direct costs up to August 2024 totalled just over $1.17 million, with $140,872 for artist expenses, while hospitality cost them $27,319, marketing and promotions $92,741, supplies and miscellaneous $25,726, technical costs $218,708, travel and accommodations $257,630, subcontractors $291,464, venue expenses $21,025 and project expenses of $102,603.
Furthermore, traditional expenditures also took up a fair amount of the budget, the highest being salaries for employees ($368,491), professional fees ($25,098) and meetings and travel ($22,574).
The ECMA’s revenue over expenses fell massively from 2023, earning $6,509 in 2024 compared to $84,307, though expenses in 2023 had been higher.
In the first video, Israël combines staff salaries and money spent on subcontractors to come up with a figure of around $660,000 ($659,955 to be exact) — not including technical costs, according to Israël. She says contractors included PR firms and a consultancy to find a new CEO. She also states that her own salary was $100,000 annually, which she tells The Coast is too high compared to other not-for-profit executive roles. Furthermore, she alleges that a second PR company had been hired behind her back by the board.
In comparison, subtracting artist membership and submission fees, Israël says that the net for artist payouts would be closer to $99,000. Divided by the total membership (over 1,000 members), this would average around $100 per person. According to Israël, artists are being left in the dust.
“I didn’t understand right away,” says Israël. “This association is not really an association at all. It’s a festival. The name is an association, and you have to be considered a member essentially to apply, like, you have to pay $50 to be considered to play at the festival.
“There’s a lot of festivals that run on that model, and it’s predatory,” she continues. “It’s like you’re making people pay just for the chance to apply and get considered, and I don’t like that model at all.”
There is a line in the financial statements for 2024 that shows $27,877.43 had been paid for artist travel and accommodations. Israël says a small number of artists get accommodations for a night or two, typically those performing at the awards ceremony. The hosts often get travel and accommodations. Nominees are offered one ticket for the awards, but neither they nor general membership are compensated for travel, accommodations or meals.
“If you’re a solo musician, and you’re doing a showcase at the ECMAs, you’ll be making around $150. If you play on the awards show, then you’ll make more, but honestly, not enough more,” says Israël. “Not enough to pay to fly your band to Newfoundland and house and feed them for five days.”
In an emailed response on Tuesday, Aug. 26, Hallett says that subcontractors, along with a small staff, are “the most cost-effective and operationally efficient operating model.”
As for the money artists receive for showcases, Hallett says this will be “reviewed and adjusted as the budget for Sydney 2026 comes into focus in the next few weeks.”
Board policy & bylaws
In her second video on the matter, Israël spoke on the bylaws that the ECMA board must abide by. The last review of these policies came in 2019 when the organization became federally incorporated.
The ECMA board of directors has two types of roles: regional directors and appointed directors. Five are elected for each category, and one from each region: Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, PEI, and Cape Breton. Other directors can also be elected/appointed outside of those 10. The regional directors are elected by membership, while the appointed directors, typically executives in their province’s music association, are appointed by said associations and approved by the board.
Israël says that after the last annual general meeting in February 2025, six board members left. There are currently three vacant spots on the board for representatives from Music Nova Scotia, Music/Musique New Brunswick, and Music PEI.
“Filling the vacant positions is an immediate priority,” says Hallett, “however, these representatives are chosen by the Music Industry Associations, not by me or the board.”
Israël is particularly critical of the decision to remove term limits, a change made when the policies were updated in 2017. The 2016 copy of the ECMA bylaws shows that while regional board members could choose terms of either one or two years, they could sit on the board for a total of seven years in total. After that, they would have to vacate their position.
While appointed directors vacate their position upon the conclusion of their annual general meeting—if there’s a representative from their organization selected to replace them—these term limits were done away with for regional directors in 2017.
“These positions are (for) volunteers,” says Israël. “If you’re clinging on to this position for ten plus years, what’s in it for you? There must be some personal benefit to you if you’re staying there for that long.
“If you zoom all the way out, the idea with the board is that you have a membership. The membership is not all going to sit down together every month to talk about the organization, so you designate some people.”
As of right now, Israël says only two of the regional directors have been properly elected, although the ECMA website signals that most have been elected. When Hallett was asked about who had been voted in, he shared the list available on the website, stating the “majority were elected”. Voting on a regional director typically takes place at an annual general meeting (usually in November).
Two directors have been appointed by the board to fill positions that had been previously vacated, holding their position until the end of the outgoing director’s term. This is standard, according to Israël, but may not be the best decision given the scrutiny the ECMA is currently facing.
“That’s the normal procedure, except that this is not really normal times,” says Israël. “If I was trying to ensure good governance during a time like this, I would go out of my way to make sure that there is actually some representation of the community.”
What needs to change?
When Israël was enlisted as CEO, she began to make moves to change the nomination process in support of artists who didn’t do as well on streaming platforms but were nonetheless aiding the cultural vibrancy of the Atlantic Canadian music scene.
The guidelines she laid out focused less on music streaming data and included a question: Why should you be considered for a nomination?
Israël had also allegedly left long-standing contractors out of the conversation, inciting ECMA’s comments on “lost institutional knowledge.” CBC confirmed that several long-standing contractors would not work with the ECMA in 2024.
A petition came out against these changes by Sheri Jones, a music manager and the founding director of the ECMA. Her petition gained over 650 signatures. Jones also took to the media to criticize Israël’s decisions, telling CBC, “These awards were put in place to recognize commercial success. Music is very subjective. It could be a terrible song recorded in your bedroom, and if six million people streamed it, that’s a commercial success.”
Israël sees Jones’ criticism as distracting from the real issues facing both artists and the ECMA.
“The award criteria was a red herring,” says Israël. “The changes there, to me, were like, we are making this accessible to more genres because there’s a lot of genres that don’t really deal in full albums, and there’s also like, different rules in different genres. So we were trying to come up with a lower common denominator that we could apply and make it all make sense.”
Israël mentioned genres like electronic music and hip-hop, both gaining new ground as genres that are enhancing local music scenes, making them more diverse despite how underserved they have been in the past.
“I didn’t realize that there were people that wanted it just the way that it was, and were going to bully it back into being that. I learned that’s kind of their playbook.”
According to Hallett, the organization is intent on developing its new strategic plan to lead it forward while returning to the ECMA’s original goal of “providing grassroots artists and industry players of Atlantic Canada access to regional, national and international markets and provide them with the tools and opportunities to expand their careers and economic possibilities.”
Yet, at this point, Israël wonders if an annual awards show is really the best way to support artists.
“I’ve puzzled on this for a year and a half now,” she says. “I don’t think there’s a path where the current board gets replaced, but when you look at the structural stuff…you would need a board that is willing to fundamentally change the activities of this organization, and has a clear idea of what the point is.”
Israël has since dived fully into working on her own art. She was a cellist long before becoming the ECMA CEO, and music is what she’s returned to after feeling so let down by an industry that promotes itself as supporting people like her.
“I think that these decisions should be rooted in the art itself. The answers are there. And when we forget that, then we’re just replicating capitalist structures that are unable to dream, unable to get creative. Our strength is our creativity.”
This article appears in Aug 1-31, 2025.
