This area of my web site lists and describes all of the resources currently available on the Internet of which I am aware that would likely be of interest to aficionados of traditional Scottish music as played in Cape Breton. You will also find selected resources drawn from the much wider world of Celtic music that are likely to appeal to those who enjoy traditional Cape Breton music: I have not tried for anything approaching the same level of completeness—a massive undertaking—but merely list here a number of such resources that I have enjoyed over the years.
This 2019 June rewrite is a substantial revision: some programs have ceased appearing, sadly including three I listened to without fail: Downeast Cèilidh, Highland Fling, and Vinyl Café; new ones have made their appearance; and yet others have had changes to their content or to their links. The links now given in this section are once again correct; more than in any other area of this web site, these links change often and without notice and normally for no apparent reason. If, at any time, you discover broken links in this section (or anywhere else in this web site), kindly use the address in the footer to notify me so that I can correct them promptly!
The five pages previously present in this section have been reduced to two as the continued evolution of the Internet has rendered the distinctions I previously made rather arbitrary and hard to justify. Consequently, you will now find these topics:
- Programs
- Programs are recurring events, usually with a fixed announcer, centred around a given kind of content. In the past, they were scheduled for a fixed time slot (daily or weekly or sometimes less frequently) and were sent out “live” over the air waves from a local radio station. For some time now, many of these programs have also been concurrently streamed out to Internet listeners world wide at the same time as they are broadcast locally over the air. As well, many programs, including most of those broadcast on the BBC, have also been offered for “on-demand listening”, which requests a server to re-stream the recorded program to you over the Internet at a time of your choosing, though usually within some limited time after the original broadcast. And, in 2019, there are now programs which are never broadcast over the air, but are available only via a stream on the Internet; this is a trend that is likely to become more prevalent in the future. Podcasts, which have been around for some time, differ from programs streamed over the Internet primarily in that they must first be downloaded to your device, which can take a significant amount of space (50MB for an hour-long podcast is typical, before they can be heard, but thereafter they can be heard at any time you choose and for however long you wish to retain them on your device, unlike an Internet stream, which can be heard only so long as it remains available on the server. In short, the Internet has allowed the manner and timing of a program’s delivery to be decoupled from its content.
- Radio Stations
- A radio station is a normal over-the-air radio station, but one either located in or heard in Cape Breton and which also streams their broadcasts over the Internet. Except as noted, most of these stations offer little of interest to the Cape Breton traditional music fan, but do carry Cape Breton news, sports, and weather as well as other kinds of music and programming that might be of interest to some, including those in cars travelling about in Cape Breton.