Galaxie, an online radio service from CBC

mch

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Nov 11, 2008
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Note: You do not have to live in Canada or subscribe to any services to enjoy Galaxie. See end of this post.

What is Galaxie?
Well, let's first allow them to describe themselves...
Galaxie, CBC’s Continuous Music Network, is available throughout Canada on a subscription basis. It offers a vast universe of continuous music channels in digital-quality sound, which are uninterrupted by ads or talk. The channels feature a fresh mix of music 24 hours a day, seven days week, and are expertly programmed. Each programmer is a professional and an avid enthusiast in a particular musical genre.

Basically, Galaxie is the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's take on a digital music service in the vein of Music Choice or those other music packages that used to be popular on satellite and cable packages before XM/Sirius simulcasting became popular. In Canada, it often is that music package, and if you live there may get some or all channels on your TV package (it competes with privately-owned Max Trax, and shares channels in some areas).

As is demanded by the Canadian government, Galaxie is required to meet a minimum of content performed by Canadian artists. This means on more popular genres you may see Canadian artists given more airtime than you'd expect, or see artist you're totally unfamiliar with in genres you know very well, but casual listeners of niche genres probably won't notice nor care.

Why should I care about this?
It's pretty well programmed, and it's got channels for genres you won't find even on Sirius XM. My favourite is the all Nature sounds channel, but there's other channels for chamber music (no such thing on SatRad since Sirius shut down Vista and merged it into Symphony Hall in 2004), Indian music, all sorts of contemporary Asian music (there's clearly an anime/Japan fan on staff), Celtic, and even country-western music in French.

List of channels: Galaxie on the Internet

Who's programming this stuff?
A biography of all the channel PDs and their personal top 10s for their respective genres is available here.

Keep in mind that like any online jukebox, there's no DJ presence.

Okay, so how do I listen?
Well, if you're from Canada, it might be included on your TV package.

Otherwise, the player is at this link:
Galaxie on Sympatico MSN

As far as I can tell, the online streams aren't the exact same thing playing on TV, but they use the same libraries.