Just in case we (or your other annoying indie friends) haven't told you yet: There's a lot of great music coming out of Canada. And Spotify wants you to know about it...supposedly. Hence the huge project it just launched on its Insights blog allowing you to "Canadify" your favorite act, reportedly so that you can start digging similar bands from the cold, white north. We're big fans of the Iceberg and CBC Radio 3 options of SiriusXM and all the new stuff they turn us on to, so we decided to bite.
The process is simple. Follow this link and type your favorite band into the text box and hit the "Canadify" button. We, still caught up in the grunge era, searched for Soundgarden. The results were...disappointing to say the least. Spotify decided that Nickelback, Three Days Grace and Theory of A Deadman were pretty safe alternatives to Soundgarden. Grunge fans know that the chasm between grunge and post-grunge is monumental, however Spotify does not (for the record, Three Days Grace is our least favorite group. Ever. Most people say Nickelback but that's just because all the cool kids say that). We tried again in a different genre. "High On Fire" brought us the suggestion of Bison b.c., which is much more accurate. Bison is indeed a solid sludge metal band, hailing from the Vancouver region.
Just to be snarky, we entered a Canadian band to see if the program would explode. It was too smart for us however: "Rush" yielded the result "Woah! Rush is already Canadian."
This is all a tie-in to Spotify's recent opening of service in Canada. Another feature provided was a list of songs listened to in supposedly disproportionate amounts by Canadians, including "Up We Go" by Lights and "Cardiac Arrest" by Bad Suns. We're not sure how much faith to put in these results when they've only been tracked for roughly a week however.
