Time is a flat circle. We once had DJs spinning records on the radio, curating the playlists, and deciding what we hear. Mixtapes popped up giving us the power to record our own playlists; the internet, Napster, and mp3 technology sent these playlists into overdrive. Now we are creeping back to curated collections, every pop-culture outlet seems to have at least one or two Spotify playlists to help you find the newest tracks.
CJSW 90.9 FM from Calgary is campus radio that has made the excellent decision to release their programming as podcasts after airing. This is great news for us who want proper curation but are also extremely lazy. Spotify and Sirius offer offline listening. CJSW’s advantage is that once you subscribe on your podcast app of choice, new episodes will automatically download and you don’t need to do anything. If you are like me and try to limit data usage, setting my podcast app to only wifi downloads has been a game changer.
Although each program on CJSW releases a single, two-hour episode per week, there are so many good programs that it is difficult to run out of tunes. Simply searching “CJSW” in the podcast app will find all the shows waiting for you.
Another perk to CJSW for non-Canadians is that Canadian broadcasting law requires certain percentages of content be of Canadian origin. As a hip-hop fan, America has produced more excellent music than I’ll ever be able to hear in my lifetime. Dirty Needles and Mental Illness play a lot of that American content but also promote Canadian artists that I would not be able to discover myself.
The Keasy Depot 