Eager and aspiring young learners walked into a dim room inside of the North York Civic Centre for "Get in the Know", a music industry workshop. Put together by Entyse Entertainment and hosted by Linykie Nix, over 300 guests confirmed on Facebook and only one third of the crowd showed up. Oh well, the workshop went on! Strong and acclaimed guest speakers hit the stage: SOCAN's Rodney Murphy, producer Derek Bin, DJ Phatkat, rapper Imaan Faith, R&B sensation Kim Davis, and yours truly, Priya Ramanujam from Urbanology Magazine. Darkchild songwriter Delisha Thomas was unable to make it, but called in.

The event was put together to educate and elevate young artists, entrepreneurs and those who just want to work behind the scenes in the music industry on areas such as artist management and development, song writing, publishing, marketing, public relations, music affiliations and much more. The audience and panellists were able to interact with each other which made the workshop beneficial.

However, the opinions were half and half when it came to satisfaction regarding the workshop. Jason Thomas and Garlen Smith were both in attendance and both young entrepreneurs are currently trying to put their products out there to the public. Thomas works on custom designed T-shirts while Smith works on making beats. Both attended it for exposure to help their businesses and also get the networking opportunities they needed; the workshop was everything they thought it would be.
 
However, there were two unhappy young men from Highschool Corp. who felt as if the workshop was wrongly advertised on Facebook. McKenize Ellis and Dwayne Holness said they felt as if the information w as misleading. Holness, 21, stated, "I was hoping it would be like a university lecture... handouts discussing all the topics under the music stream. It was more like conversation that we have already heard many times before, mainly common sense." Ellis and Holness came to the workshop expecting solutions, but only heard about problems they were already familiar with. Ellis, 20, added, "There is still power in Toronto, there always will be. We're searching for the steps to success that we did not find."
 
Performances from singer/songwriter Cry and previous Honey Jam performer Pamela Levi rocked the night to a comfortable and enjoyable close.

Written By. Ranjit Dhatt + Photos By. Nicolas Denny