Track 9: One Step from Magic — Carter & the Capitals
As much as I’ve enjoyed my exploration of physical media, I’m curious to see what libraries are doing with music in the age of streaming. For that, I need to go a bit further: to Edmonton.
At first glance, Alberta’s capital city doesn’t look like much. Its downtown core is a windswept cement grid where raised pickup trucks rev their engines at red lights. Cross the North Saskatchewan river, however, and you’ll find a vibrant arts scene and mighty progressive organizers.
The first time I visited was to attend a training to prepare for the climate strikes of September 2019. The second was when Yellowknife, where I lived at the time, was evacuated due to an out-of-control wildfire.
Edmonton is also home to Capital City Records, a community-driven local music streaming platform created by the Edmonton Public Library. It follows a model pioneered by the Iowa City Public Library and replicated around North America.
Pelly explains how it works. Curators made up of the local music scene and library staff choose which artists to add to the collection once a year. The library then licences the music directly from artists for a set fee. In Edmonton’s case, anyone on the Internet can stream the music for free, and the library’s patrons can download it.
What I love about the Edmonton model is that it’s not just a collection — it’s also a digital public space. It includes profiles of local music legends with stories, photos and clips of interviews. It preserves the history of music venues that have closed. That hits close to home for me in Montreal, where gentrification and noise complaints are shuttering one small venue after another.
Streaming a playlist curated by the library, I feel like I’m glimpsing into a possible future for music. An antidote, perhaps, to algorithmic streaming’s hyper-individual, atomized way of listening. A return to the early promise of the Internet as a democratizing force, a model of public ownership and community governance that puts people before profit.
