About Littlebit
Founder’s Story
My English name is Meghan Meisters. I am professionally known as iskwē, and my ancestors know me as
waseskwan iskwew, Blue Sky Woman. I am Cree Métis, a citizen of the Manitoba Métis Federation through my
maternal line, and I was largely raised in my grandfather's home in Winnipeg, in the heart of the Red River
Métis Nation, surrounded by story, ceremony, and kinship.
I left Winnipeg in 2004 to chase music. One of my first jobs in Toronto was running a youth music program
at the Native Canadian Centre, where I coordinated powwow singing and drumming workshops, hip hop dance, and
music production for Indigenous kids, many of whom had not had access to any music education yet,
traditional or contemporary. I did not know it at the time, but that job was the blueprint for everything
I have built since. Talent was never the thing in short supply. Access was.
Twenty years as an independent artist taught me just how true that was. I built a career inside an
industry that often seems to work best when artists do not know how it works. I learned where the money goes
because I had to. I learned contracts, budgets, royalties, distribution, and grant systems the way you learn
anything when no one will teach you: slowly, and at my own expense. I’ve been blessed to be nominated for
and even win some awards along the way, a JUNO among them, for which I am very proud. But sometimes it seems
the knowledge cost more than the trophies were worth. Still, I keep meeting brilliant artists paying the same
tuition I did.
In 2013, I started my own label because I needed one. It began as a sole proprietorship with a roster of
exactly one: me. Since then, it has grown into a federally incorporated company and a team of more than
twenty people who have helped carry my music farther than I could have imagined from my family’s
living room.
Littlebit Records is that machine, turned outward.
Here is what I believe. An artist should never have to choose between their art and understanding their
business. So at Littlebit, development means both. We sign one album at a time, so no one is ever trapped.
Our books are open to our artists, always. And by the end of a project cycle, my goal is that every Littlebit
artist can read their own statements, run their own budget, and negotiate their next deal from a position of
strength, whether that deal is with us or with someone else.
If an artist outgrows us, we did our job.
I do not want Littlebit to be the exception. I want it to be proof that the industry's way was always a
choice, and that a different choice was available the whole time.
This page, and this label, will be built in the open. I will share the process as it happens, the wins
and the unglamorous parts too, because you should get to see how a record label actually works. That has
been kept behind closed doors for long enough.
Come with me.
iskwēᐃᐢᑫᐧᐤ
Founder, Littlebit Records
