Music in Range

Book excerpt: Music in Range explores the history of Canadian campus radio, highlighting the factors that have shaped its close relationship with local music and culture. The book traces how campus radio practitioners have expanded stations from campus borders to sur-rounding musical and cultural communities by acquiring FM licenses and establishing community-based mandates. The culture of a campus station extends beyond its studio and into the wider community where it is connected to the local music scene within its broadcast range. The book examines campus stations and local music in Vancouver, Winnipeg, and Sackville, NB, and highlights the ways that campus stations—through music-based programming, their operational practices, and the culture under which they operate—produce alternative methods and values for circulating local and independent Canadian artists at a time when ubiquitous commercial media outlets do exactly the opposite. Music in Range sheds light on a radio sector that is an integral component of Canada’s musical and cultural fabric and positions campus radio as a worthy site of attention at a time when connectivity and sharing between musicians, music fans, and cultural intermediaries are increasingly shaping our experience of music, radio, and sound.