CBC Music

CBC Music

Type	Public
Founded	2012
Area served	Canada
Industry	Music
Owner	Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
Website	music.cbc.ca
Registration	Optional
Available in	English
Current status	Active

CBC Music is a digital music service, launched by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on February 13, 2012. The service provides online streaming of 53 web radio services, including the existing radio networks CBC Radio 2 and CBC Radio 3 and 47 streams devoted to particular genres of music. Some of the genre webstreams were already provided by Radio 2 or Radio 3, while others were new offerings at the 2012 launch.

A similar site, IciMusique.ca (formerly espace.mu, in reference to former radio branding Espace Musique), is also offered by the CBC's French radio division, Société Radio-Canada.

In addition to the website, the service is also available as a smartphone application for Android, iPhones, iPads and BlackBerry.

History

The service was launched shortly after the CBC reached a music licensing deal with the AVLA in January 2012. The site is one of the first large-scale ventures into online broadcasting to be available in Canada since the launch of Iceberg Radio in 1997; at the time of CBC Music's launch, popular international ventures such as Pandora or Spotify remained unavailable to Canadian consumers.

Shortly after the service's launch, Stingray Digital, the owner of the cable audio service Galaxie, filed a complaint with the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission, alleging that the CBC's access to government funding gave it an unfair competitive advantage over private for-profit services. Noting that the CBC pays the same copyright royalties to SOCAN as the competing services and that it places a much greater emphasis on Canadian content than the commercial services, the CRTC dismissed the complaint in August 2012.

In May 2013, the service sponsored the first CBC Music Festival, which is staged every spring at Ontario Place's Echo Beach.

The service also mounts the annual Searchlight competition for unsigned emerging bands.

Content

The music streams are organized into various music communities, based on the existing community networking model developed by CBC Radio 3, whereby fans and genre specialists can participate in blogging and forum discussion about genre news and artists.

In addition, the site also serves as a portal to the websites of Q and The Strombo Show, two of the most popular music-related shows on CBC Radio's terrestrial services, and some artists' music and concert performances may also be streamed on demand.

In December 2013, the site also launched the first issue of CBC Music Magazine, an e-magazine distributed in both iOS and Android formats.

Searchlight

Prior to the launch of CBC Music, Radio 3 broadcast an annual "Searchlight" contest, soliciting listener votes in a process to determine the "best" of various aspects of the Canadian music industry. The topic of Searchlight was different each year, with contests focusing on such themes as Canada's best live music club, best music festival and best music website.

Following the launch of CBC Music, Searchlight was relaunched as a platform-wide contest to determine Canada's best unsigned musical artist. Incorporating participation from both CBC Music and CBC Radio One, the process begins with a series of local competitions produced by Radio One's local afternoon shows. Listener feedback and online voting determines the artists who advance to the next round, until the national stage of the competition begins on Q.

When the list has been narrowed to ten artists, three established musicians step in as judges, who each pick their own favourite act. Those three artists and an audience selection as determined by online voting advance to the final round as the four finalists, following which the judges debate and discuss the choices before voting on the ultimate winner.

The winner of the competition wins $20,000 in musical gear from Yamaha Music, as well as a slot on the bill at the CBC Music Festival.

Winners and finalists

• 2013 - Sherman Downey and the Ambiguous Case, Good Ol' Goats
• 2014 - Lauren Mann and the Fairly Odd Folk, Jofo, Erin Saoirse Adair, Fitness Club Fiasco. Judges: Torquil Campbell, Sarah Slean and Kardinal Offishall.
• 2015 - Orange O'Clock, Scary Bear Soundtrack, The Fall Line, Ivory Hours. Judges: Dan Boeckner, Jenn Grant and Saukrates.

CBC Music Festival

The CBC Music Festival takes place in Toronto, on the Echo Beach stage at Ontario Place. Each year's event features a lineup of acts from several different genres, including the winner of that year's Searchlight competition, as well as at least one taping of a performance by a CBC Radio comedy show.

• 2013 - Sam Roberts, Of Monsters and Men, Kathleen Edwards, Sloan, Corb Lund and the Hurtin' Albertans, Half Moon Run, Jarvis Church, Elisapie Isaac, Aidan Knight, Kae Sun, Shakura S'Aida, Sherman Downey and the Ambiguous Case.
• 2014 - Tegan and Sara, Arkells, Crystal Shawanda, Chad VanGaalen, Spoon, Hannah Georgas, Wake Owl, The Belle Game, Dan Mangan, Lauren Mann and the Fairly Odd Folk, The Irrelevant Show
• 2015 - Patrick Watson, Bahamas, Cœur de pirate, Joel Plaskett, The Strumbellas, Shad, Jenn Grant, Lindi Ortega, Tanika Charles, Choir! Choir! Choir!, The Debaters, Fred Penner, Mamma Yamma, Orange O'Clock.

Streams

Live Radio

• CBC Radio 2 - five separate feeds, one for each of the Atlantic, Eastern, Central, Mountain and Pacific time zones
• CBC Radio 3
• Sonica - An adult album alternative stream which launched in 2013, and is simulcast on Sirius XM Radio channel 171, where it replaced Bande à part following that service's discontinuation. The service has since been dropped from Sirius XM in favour of CBC Country, a showcase of Canadian Country music owned by the CBC.

Genre

• Seasonal/Special Formats 1 - A stream which rotates through a series of short term specialty formats, most commonly formatted around a theme such as a prominent and influential artist, a broad selection of artists from a particular Canadian region, a seasonal theme such as Christmas music, or another musical topic. This stream debuted as Complete Cohen, featuring the songs of Leonard Cohen in both the Cohen originals and cover versions by other artists. Subsequent formats have included Complete Blue Rodeo, featuring the songs of Blue Rodeo; Hamilton Rocks, featuring artists from Hamilton, Ontario; and Drummers Who Sing.
• Seasonal/Special Formats 2
• New Wave (formerly Jian's New Wave)
• Kids CBC
• Nesrallah's Tempo (formerly Radio 2 Classical)
• Essential Classics
• Operatic - Opera recordings and performances.
• Baroque - Baroque music
• Modern Masters
• Orchestral
• Piano
• Chamber
• CBC Records - Classical music recordings which have been released on CBC Records.
• Canadian Composers
• Choral
• Classical Serenity
• Radio 2 Jazz
• Jazz Masters
• Jazz Songbook
• Jazz Canada
• Smooth Jazz
• Canadian Songwriters
• Singer-Songwriters
• Adult Alternative - adult album alternative music
• Canadian Roots
• World - world music
• Bollywood
• Indie - indie rock and indie pop music
• Rock - modern rock, hosted by Vish Khanna
• Rock Classics - classic rock hits
• Metal - hard rock and heavy metal songs
• Pop 40 - contemporary hit radio
• Adult Pop - adult contemporary hits
• Jukebox Favourites
• The 70s - Hits of the 1970s
• The 80s - Hits of the 1980s
• The 90s - Hits of the 1990s
• Blues - blues music
• Blues Classics
• R&B / Soul - R&B/soul hits
• Classic Soul / R&B
• Hip-Hop - Hip hop hits
• Country - country music hits
• Alternative Country - alternative country
• Country Classics
• Aboriginal - First Nations music
• Electronic - electronic music
• Ambient Lounge - ambient music
• EDM

External links

• Official website
• espace.mu