In a time when independent Canadian artists are at their peak and continuing to show the world what they can do, few people within Canada have stepped up to put money where their mouths are. That is, except for the great Trojan horse in the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation‘s cupboard.
I will admit to a certain amount of bias. I worked for them for many years when they first started. At that time, we shifted from radio programming to multiple web sites to an award winning web magazine. My time has come and gone there, but CBC Radio 3 continues to push its original mandate of supporting Indie Canadian artists of all genres for the most part.
Terrestrial broadcast radio efforts from years ago have turned into a satellite & web stream that runs all but 24-7. You’re not going to find a purely CanCon focused webstream out there of this quality. Remember, we’re talking about a place that has helped to break artists like The Arcade Fire over the years. Hosts like Grant Lawrence are polarizing. But at the end of the day, the knowledge provided beats that from anyone else out there in the commercial radio market.
Web sites like the live concert and session showcase, just concerts and the massive artist database have all been congregated under one web address now but the quality remains good. Nowhere else will you find concerts from the likes of Sigur Ros, The Arcade Fire or Metric in one place with this kind of quality. Nor will you find as much Indie Canadian music in one place, be it cowboys recording the blues in their bedrooms or the latest work of Indie artists on labels like Mint or Paper Bag Records.
Even the award winning web magazine has made a shift. Now, more of a blog than anything else, the focus on promoting the best and the brightest that Canada has to offer under the radar is there. If they could only convince Patti Schmidt to come back.