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Légendes d’un peuple – oeuvres choisies, tomes I à V by Alexandre BelliardLabel: DEP Distribution |
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De Profundis by Penderecki String QuartetLabel: Marquis Music |
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Georg Philipp Telemann: Le théatre musical de Telemann by Ensemble Masques and Olivier FortinLabel: Alpha |
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I Am The Hero by Shirley EikhardLabel: Shirley Eikhard |
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Les Belles Chansons by Various ArtistsLabel: Tandem.mu |
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L’Heptade XL by HarmoniumLabel: Sony Music Canada Inc. |
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Angels Bend Closer by Jane SiberryLabel: CD Baby |
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Pacific Myth by Protest The HeroLabel: Sony Music Canada – Distribution |
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Do Easy by TasseomancyLabel: Sony Music Canada – Distribution |
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Boulevard Country by BélisleLabel: EDC/DEP |
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Vu d’en haut… mes inédites by Pier BélandLabel: EDC/DEP |
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Darker Things by AutoerotiqueLabel: Dim Mak |
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Familiar Touch by DIANALabel: Universal Music |
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Cast the First Stone by Ion DissonanceLabel: Sony Music Canada – Distribution |
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The Beat Is Dead by Nina DiazLabel: Universal Music |
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Strvngers by StrvngersLabel: Universal Music |
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Automatic Hand by Twin RainsFormat: Download |
Album releases for Friday 18th November 2016
49 Comments
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Good morning!
Good morning! Quiet around here this morning!
Good morning. It is quiet. I think even the tumbleweed is still sleeping.
Sniff Sniff
*cookie*
Cookie! Om nom nom nom nom
Love your blog, Raccoon.
Thank you
Hello all.
That Harmonium reissue caught my eye. I was introduced to that band in the early 80s and do have another of their albums on vinyl which I just listened to again recently. Lovely stuff.
*yawn*
um…weee?
Hello from California.
I just happened to look on the CBC Music website from my iPhone, and all I saw were a bunch of circles with slashes in them indicating I couldn’t listen. I’m tempted to write to them and ask, “Just how is this helping Canadian artists who need to expand their fan base beyond the Great White North?”
how does one pronounce “Strvngers”?
@Lee – I really thought that would have changed by now. So stupid.
@krib – Not sure but I would just say Strangers myself.
Lee, write them! They’ll be ‘forced’ to answer with p.r., or maybe…
Darb – since you can still listen and I’m expressly forbidden, what does the “new R3” even sound like now? Just a bunch of songs thrown together with those same drop ins that we heard using Grant’s and Lana’s voices? Is there anyone else? Have the podcasts gotten any better/worth listening to? I cannot express enough just how much Radio3 was a part of my daily life for a bunch of years.
Benoit – Oh, I’ve written them many times over the years. I found my very first protest letter to CBC upper management in 2009, when I first heard of threats to Radio3. 2009! That was back in the glory years! Then as Radio3 slowly was drained of life, more letters, contacts with both Steve Pratt and with upper management, whose name escapes me for the moment, from Toronto. And lastly, the tease I left as the end of the blog was approaching and I mentioned that Mark Macarthur was sharpening his knives to stab us all in the back, and he wrote me a rather indignant email in response. I responded to him that all I was doing was the time honoured ritual of shooting the messenger, and told him not to worry, as I’d be gone soon, forced out by CBC decisions. He never responded back. I’m so tempted to write to him and ask how the new Radio3 is really doing.
Meh. Times change. Radio3 and its supporters get screwed . . . and we elect Trump. As Novemberman once sang in his song, “We’re fucked.”
🙂
@Mcfflyer – write them! I wonder if you’ll get a response. I didn’t when I asked a similar question.
@Lee – Well most importantly, I am enjoying most of the music they are playing. They continue to introduce me to new music and throw in more of the old favourites again. We still hear Lana and Grant’s voices and that is bittersweet but they also seem to still be adding the blurbs from artists. Some I have heard many times but then there will be new ones. I do find them mostly interesting. No it is not like it was and even I don’t listen as much as I was. Partly that is because my old computer here stalls out on the stream from time to time and I wander off.
I will be checking out that Tasseomancy album when it comes out on Spotify. I am interested to hear what they sound like on this one.
Hi Lee, after Steve Pratt it was likely Jonas Woost or Mark Steinmetz you may have reached out to. Mark Macarthur is a great guy, but he has to toe the corporate line, him and Bill Dale (Who now leads the team) weren’t too happy with my outbursts as well. As they told me in person. I occasionally see Bill in passing, and saw Mark only briefly a few months ago. Apparently there is new money at the Ceeb, and no one is talking about cutbacks, but I doubt any of it will go towards revamping R3.
They just released the french version of the new site a couple weeks ago, for ICI Musique, you will see the similarities. But I agree what they’ve done is nothing for artists. In fact many artists aren’t that please with them as they’re profiles and music are in limbo until CBC music supplies an admin section to administer themselves. I know this from another colleague at the Ceeb who mentioned that they used CBC Music as an example of how not to launch a new site. Or something along those lines.
R3 being a random playlist just doesn’t do it for me, I’d rather a curated stream that we all could listen to at the same time, rather than a playlist that only I am hearing.
btw Princefarming is me Michael Wynn! ( I have too many wordpress accounts)
Here are some stats for CBCMusic.ca from Alexa
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/cbcmusic.ca
Hey Michael,
No, it was neither of them. Ann MacKeigan? That’s the name in the back of my mind. That’s who I corresponded with, back just after Craig left, and I was dismayed at how they hadn’t replaced him with a radio professional, just the “fill in guest hosts” who we had for a couple of years, and who said absolutely nothing, just “that was, I am, have you ever” host breaks. When Craig wasn’t replaced, that was the writing on the wall. And should have Grant left for any reason before March 2015, Radio3 would have shut down all live hosting sooner than they did.
I was a little surprised when Mark reacted so harshly at what was a lighthearted “stab us in the back” term. He was pretty indignant that he was showing up “respect” by letting us know that the end of the blog was coming, and I just thought it was simply reacting to the coup de gras that was approaching. Just surprised at his reaction, since I’d met him back on my frist visit to CBC in 2009.
He let us know the end of the blog was coming?
I heard it from Tiff, who, IIRC, was asked to beta test their new site and asked “so when is the member area going to be created?”
after that, Mark showed up and said “oh…yeah…we’re not having a member area on the new site.”
My secret inside source told me, didn’t you Wynnzie… oops
@krib – yes, Kirby, he did come on the blog one day to say that the end was coming. Maybe he did it because he understood what R3 stood for – at one time. But he sure didn’t like that I teased him about it.
And I met him on my first visit to CBC, not my frist!
Garf, yes I did, haha.
I have said and I know we all agree, that they dropped the ball when it came to all of this. Who decimates a site, taking away functionality without thinking about the impact to the users/listeners? I would argue it’s people who don’t REALLY care that much about the outcome. At the Ceeb you don’t lose your job when ratings go down, or things seem like failures (in the private world they would be). Nope people just seem to get rewarded and ultimately move up.
I think in the end I was pushed out because I complained openly about it all while I worked there. The truth is, the site is being run by Radio people, not necessarily Web experts. And they don’t care about Radio3.
Lee: Ann is a radio person there, in charge of the hosts, for Radio 2, she doesn’t have much knowledge in the web side of things. She was likely given the task to respond to you by default. I think from an auditor point of view, they have to respond to these types of queries from the public. And I’ll tell you, it was likely her decision to lay off Lana.
Actually, Michael, I got an email from her because I’d written to one of the “guest hosts” – I don’t remember which one now – who I assumed was going to be the new afternoon host, after Lana was temporarily moved to the morning slot after Craig left. (Sorry, Lana’s an afternoon host, NOT a morning host!) I was telling her that there’s a whole group out there ready to be her friend and help in any way we could. I asked a few questions, and she deferred to Ann, clearly in fear for giving out any answers. Ann came back with a response – and actually, a quite long one. But nothing changed.
Also after corresponding with Ann, I was offered the change to take a survey directly from Radio3, that I did take, but I’ve never heard that anyone else anywhere even saw that survey of about 40 questions. Do you know anything about that survey that obviously was never widely distributed.
One last thing – I had written to Steve Pratt, about a year before he left, expressing the mutual unhappiness on how the R3 world, and especially the community felt about the deliberate destruction of the station. Steve wrote me back – and then called me – to say he was unaware that the community was upset. He told me he felt that the community was the greatest thing that came out of Radio3, and he said he’d try to help it. Maybe he did, or maybe he didn’t but he was gone within a year.
Ya I don’t recall which survey that was, but at the time there were cuts happening all over, I suspect that people in charge of the survey – moved on, and there was no follow up. Steve I think became frustrated by a lot of what was happening, he put on a brave face, but I don’t think things were going the way he expected.
Mike, that survey was Radio3 specific, asking questions about the music, the variety of the music, the hosts and so on. For all I know, I might be the only one who ever took it. Maybe it was underdevelopment at the time, and I was the only one to take it and then the idea was scrapped, as clearly the responses weren’t going to be what they wanted. (I’ll look in my old emails to see if I can find it.)
I tell you all: I was doing all I could to help save the best radio station I’d ever heard.
Just looked back. It was Alanna Stewart who deferred to Ann. (I’d previously written to Talia Schlanger before she disappeared.) And it was Ann who invited me to participate in the survey. Here is the text of her email to me:
From: “Ann MacKeigan”
To: mcfflyer@comcast.net
Sent: Wednesday, October 2, 2013 11:49:00 AM
Subject: Radio 3 Survey Invite – Have your say!
Hello Lee,
I am writing to ask for a bit of your time to give us your thoughts about CBC Radio 3. We’re asking you, because either you’ve been a long time listener to Radio 3, or a sometime listener or someone we’ve just connected with in the past year. But we’d like your thoughts because we know you love music and especially Canadian music!
We’re looking for feedback from you, to help us as we chart the course for the next few years to improve and grow Radio 3 to best serve the audience of Canadian Music fans. So we’ve got a survey of about 20 questions for you, as well as room for any other feedback you think we should know. We’re asking about music, hosting, blogs, the entire Radio 3 experience. Please be honest, we have thick skins and want to make sure we’re making the best new music experience possible.
Just go to this link and you’ll be prompted to input your email:
http://cbc.polldaddy.com/s/radio-4
After that, use this password: rad1othr33
Thanks so much for taking the time to give us your feedback!
—
Ann MacKeigan
Managing Editor
CBC Music, English Services
Let’s just say that I’m not convinced that they were doing anything whatsoever to “improve” Radio3.
Uh oh, don’t tell me you said: you’d like them to make R3 a random playlist! And to get rid of live hosting!
Well actions speak louder than words, and we know where this is all at today right?
It was Lee’s fault!
😉
I know Mark came on the blog to explain, but it was after Tiff posted about beta testing and asking about the member area and the person she was talking to didn’t even know there was such a thing on the R3 site.
Yeah. Blame me. One of the things I’d been accused of was always being so negative, especially after Craig left. So much so, I said I wouldn’t comment on the state of Radio3 any more. And for the most part, I didn’t. However, I was frustrated in that I was doing everything I could to let CBC management know how important Radio3 was to me and to all of us, but I didn’t see much reaction from Canadian listeners. Cathleen, our own cathyort, wrote a long, eloquent, three page letter that spelled out what we felt was happening, as she saw the steady decline too. But the other R3 listeners just said, “Well, at least we still have what we have”, not realizing this was a slippery slope we were heading down and what we had today may be (and was) gone tomorrow. I was hoping there would be more Canadian protest of what happened, but I’m not sure anyone up there said anything. That famous Canadian “niceness” was the downfall of Radio3.
Lee, we were all very aware and many of us also voiced our concerns both on the blog and emails to cbc.
I was determined to keep giving R3 a chance before I jumped ship though.
Well, it’s now crying over spilled milk. What we had is gone. What we had was wonderful. And as Pat McPhillips said to me, maybe we should just be happy we had it when we had it for as long as we did. Maybe so, but I still feel it came to the end of its run prematurely.
Sorry to bring anyone down today.
I don’t believe there was much any of us could do, the only thing that could’ve changed it possibly was having leadership that cared about it. There wasn’t any of that, trust me. And if it was more successful, i.e. numbers-wise, they likely couldn’t have killed it off so easily. But it could only reach a plateau (numbers wise again), and this was used as an excuse (un-officially mind you) to put it where it is now. Exactly how Brave New Waves was put to rest, and by the same person.
Michael, I still say that it was killed prematurely, as it was never nurtured – specifically it was never advertised. Unless you stumbled on it, or was told about it, no one would ever find Radio3 to know just what it was. Seems to me there should have been a reach out to the youth of Canada, including colleges and universities. But Grant told me that except for an ad when Radio3 was first launched, CBC did not advertise Radio3.
Maybe it would plateau and maybe it should have ended up where it did, but I feel that there was a huge untapped pool of listeners who never knew it was there.
End of my ranting and whining.
Gee, look at that. What a lovely day…
Interesting paradox that R3 seemed to be a victim of its own success; that is, it was noticed enough to be subsumed by the CBC Music beast and, in fact, drove the design of the first CBC Music site (or it appeared that way), and also fall under the axe because it wasn’t successful enough…
oops. I appear to have mixed tenses up there ^
you all can sort it out, right?
Haha! And then The Stand comes on my R3 stream to remind me of the old R3. STANDWAGON!
And now some Two Hours Traffic.
Coincidentally, I just added The Stand to my Spotify playlist today 🙂
Lee, every comment i have ever read from you is about “the demise of radio 3”. 10 years from now you’ll be saying the same thing… let it go man. Let it go.
Steve, hell hath no fury like a Fan of The Year scorned by R3.