The music industry has spent decades pushing artists to operate as solo brands, isolated from one another and therefore easier to extract value from. Labels prefer to invest in individuals over scenes; bands have been in steady decline for more than a decade; the platforms that distribute music we love keep most of the revenue it generates. Toronto's rehearsal and recording infrastructure has fragmented in parallel: rooms close, leases expire, venues get sold to developers, and what gets lost each time is a just little bit more of the connective tissue that allows artistic communities to actually function.
TACO was created to be a practical response. The premise is that artists do better and more durable work when they share infrastructure, share knowledge, and have a real say in the spaces they depend on, and that the most reliable way to keep that infrastructure intact is to own it collectively.
What we're building here are the structural conditions for that to happen. Not by relying on goodwill alone, but by creating something that doesn't disappear when a lease runs out or a venue owner decides that the room is worth more as a cocktail bar.
The Toronto Arts Co-op currently operates as an unincorporated collective on a non-profit basis, with non-profit incorporation planned for the medium term. We are guided by four co-operative principles: accessible membership, democratic control, economic participation, and community. Members do not hold equity and are not entitled to profit distributions; surplus revenue is reinvested in the space, its reserve fund, or programming.