this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2025
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Maple Music

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Welcome to Maple Music, a community on the Lemmy.ca instance focused on bringing attention to Canadian music and musicians!

Like everything else, Canada has a rich music culture, spanning from the traditional music of the First Nations to a unique spot in the Punjabi music scene, a rich variety of folk performers to the big names in pop, and established underground music cultures such as the Edmonton hiphop and rap scene to the metal scene in the Atlantic provinces.

This community allows for postings of Canadian music news, covering anything from the local scene to world-renowned names such as Justin Bieber, Shawn Mendes, and Celine Dion. It also allows for sharing Canadian musicians you wish to give a spotlight to, individual songs and albums by Canadian artists you enjoy, and even a bit of Canadian music history seeing how poorly documented some Canadian music history can be at times.

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Please post albums using album.link and songs using songs.link! This allows people to listen to the song on whichever platform they prefer, assuming that it is available there. This is not strictly required, but is the most ideal way to share music.


Community Rules and Guidelines:

  1. Follow Site-wide rules: We are all guests in lemmy.ca's house. The house has rules that we must follow. We are polite guests.

  2. Formatting: Song and Album posts should follow the this format: "Musician - Title [Genre] (Year) (track length)". Genre, Year, and track length are not required but encouraged. Posts regarding news articles must include the article title in the post's title. Otherwise, make titles relevant to what you are trying to talk about.

  3. On Topic Posts only: All posts must be related to the Canadian music scene to some extent. For example: News about Taylor Swift will be removed. News about Taylor Swift having a Canadian tour will be kept.

  4. French & English Equal: French and English content, posts, and comments are equally welcomed and encouraged.

  5. Self-Made Music Welcomed: Are you Canadian and artistically talented? Feel free to post it here! Please do limit excessive self promotion however.

The No Rules:

  1. No shaming of music tastes: Mumble rap is not for everyone, and neither is country or dubstep. Avoid all "real music" type comments. Refrain from downvoting music that is not your taste, everyone should feel welcome regardless of the genre you enjoy.

  2. No music piracy. Much of the musicians and music shared here are likely small independent acts that deserve fiscal support. If money is an issue, please look into free and/or Creative Commons releases, a list of such titles will be made and built on as the community grows.

  3. No Spam: Please avoid spam. Rather than make individual posts for each song by a musician you like, instead make a singular post bringing attention to the musician. This applies for self-promotion posts as well.

  4. No AI Generated content: AI music posts will be deleted. This community is made to support Canadian talent. An AI cannot be Canadian, nor can it generate truly original content without infringing on countless other artist's copyrights.

  5. No doing stuff that makes me need to make more rules: Moderation reserves the right to take action on anything seen as detrimental to the community. Just cause I didn't write it down here doesn't mean it is necessarily allowed.

Rules are subject to change as the community grows.


Canadian Music News Sources:

Excellent guide for finding/exploring Canadian music by Binzy_Boi!

founded 6 months ago
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Hi all!

This was a post I had made in this community previously when I had my account on the lemmy.ca instance. Unfortunately, when I deleted my account there, it didn't clue in that in choosing to delete my posts as well, that that would include the resource posts I've made. That said, here's a recreated list that will be added to as time goes on:

Provincial Music Organisations:

Most provinces and territories have their own non-profit music organisations for the province. These organisations often help serve a role in connecting venues to musicians, musicians to those who are able to provide services of use to them, and giving musicians an opportunity to advertise themselves on the local level.

The following links are for the major music organisations in each province and territory sorted in alphabetical order of the province they serve. Please note that British Columbia and the Northwest Territories are absent as their sites lack a browsable directory, and that Nunavut is absent due to the absence of a territorial music organisation.

Quebec has also been excluded because of the language barrier on my part. If you speak French and know of the go-to organisation in Quebec with a musician directory, please let me know and I will add it.

Regional Music Organisations:

There are plenty of music organisations that either serve smaller regions than those of provinces and territories, or regions comprising of multiple provinces or territories such as the prairie provinces or Maritimes. The following is a list of organisations at a more specific or broad regional level:

Music Organisations based on Genre or other metric:

There are a number of music organisations in Canada that specialise in a specific genre, or serve specific communities such as those who are indigenous or black. A few of them include:

Canadian Music Streaming:

There is a lack of Canadian options for music streaming, with only two options coming to mind:

  • CBC Listen - CBC Listen offers music streaming, though the features of the platform are quite limited. Music is offered purely in playlists that can't be browsed, and while Canadian musicians are often featured, more mainstream artists from abroad are not uncommon.
  • Nikamowin - Nikamowin is a music streaming platform based in Canada that is catered and built for Indigenous musicians. On top of basic search functionality, one is able to search by genre, tribe/nation, and language.

Canadian Music Databases:

  • Museum of Canadian Music / CitizenFreak - The Museum of Canadian Music is Canada's largest private music museum. Over 960,000 tracks of Canadian music can be found here sorted by decade, genre, region, and more.
  • Canadian Music Centre - The Canadian Music Centre has preserved over 26,000 works by Canadian composers. These can be browsed, listened to, and watched freely for anybody interested.

Canadian Music News:

The pages listed below are publications based in Canada that mainly focus on the Canadian music scene, publications based in Canada focusing on music abroad have not been included. They are as follows:

  • Exclaim! - Canada's largest independent music publication.
  • Canadian Beats - Independent Canadian news magazine focused on spotlighting Canadian talent since 2013.
  • Hip Hop Canada - The best source for news on Canadian hip hop. Unfortunately uses AI for many of the article thumbnails.
  • Roots Music Canada - Online publication posting articles on Canadian roots music.

Canadian Music Awards:

  • East Coast Music Awards - An annual awards ceremony focused on recognising music from Atlantic Canada.
  • The Junos - An annual awards ceremony to celebrate the best of Canada's music talent
  • Polaris Music Prize - An award presented annually to the best Canadian album based on artistic merit alone

Canadian Music Charts:

  • !earshot - !earshot tracks music charts for campus radio stations across Canada. Canadian musicians on the charts are labelled with a Canadian flag next to their name.

Non-Canadian Resources for finding Canadian music:

A lot of the time one will need to utilise non-Canadian platforms to find Canadian music. Some of these include:

  • Bandcamp - While based in the U.S., Bandcamp is renowned for being a supportive platform for smaller musicians. In the discover page, one is able to search for musicians by region such as country, province or territory, or city. Be cautious however, as sometimes music by non-Canadian musicians will be posted to the pages of labels based in Canada, such as Monstercat.
  • ReverbNation - Owned by BandLab, which is based in Singapore. One is able to search for musicians based on country, province or territory, or city.

This list will be a constant work in progress. Feel free to mention more resources below, and I will gladly add them.

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[–] MacroCyclo@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

This is awesome. Thanks for putting this together! Is there a permanent location this can be put? Maybe linking to it in the sub description?

[–] Binzy_Boi@piefed.ca 1 points 1 week ago

When I created the community on the old account, I used to have it in the sidebar. This was a few months back, perhaps May or June.

Grizzly would likely be the one to handle it since before I deleted the old account, I transferred mod perms to them and Evkob.

[–] jerkface@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 week ago

Remember when Radio3 was killing it?

[–] GrizzlyBur@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 week ago

This is great! Thanks for this, I'm still relatively new to Canadian music and how to navigate the music scene in Canada. I'll make a link for this on the sidebar.