Submit a Station ID and/or a Program Bumper with your Music Submission!

We encourage artists and labels to submit a legal Station ID for airplay at the top of the hour. We do not charge for these being played, but we ask that they don’t contain calls to action regarding your album releases. Your live read should be 9 to 12 seconds long (14 to 17 words long), which will be played overtop of a 15 second audio bed (usually a track from your album that we select). You can find a full guide on submitting Station IDs here, with example scripts and recordings.

Music Submissions

We accept both physical and digital music submissions. 

  1. VERY IMPORTANT: You must submit high quality MP3s of your files. We WILL NOT stream your song from Spotify (or other streaming services) for radio play.

  2. Do not submit your music to CHLY via other station email addresses. We do not process submissions to other email accounts and these email are deleted.

  3. Music sent to us without having filled in the submission form being filled is given lower priority for processing into our library.

If you have issues submitting digitally, get in touch with the music department at music@chly.ca.

Digital Submissions

Consider submitting your music to ALL NCRA MEMBER STATIONS via the !earshot Digital Distribution System (!eDDS). Save time, and perhaps some money distributing your album!

Even if you use the !eDDS, please do us a favour and fill in the form on this page for your submission keeping in mind the requirements in the following list:

  1. A reminder: You must send high quality mp3 files for your single/EP/album. We do not stream music for radio play.

  2. We prefer new releases that contains four or more unique tracks for on-air consideration. Full albums are ideal.

  3. We will accept singles, but only if submitted digitally.

  4. Please send albums via:

    • The !eDDS.

    • Bandcamp download “Yum” code. We LOVE Bandcamp download codes. If we love your album, we’ll leave a little comment/review as a thank you for making our life easier with your music submission.

    • or in a zip format—transferring via Wetransfer, Dropbox, OneDrive, or Google Drive.

  5. If submitting via email, please do not attach individual songs to emails. Send us a link to your album.

  6. Submissions should be in a high quality MP3 (320Kbps) or AAC format. Wav files are way too big for our library.

  7. Please include a streaming link (which we can direct listeners to) and biographical information, including focus tracks.

  8. Please highlight any songs that have explicit language. We need to take some precautions with those tracks, and ensure they’re properly labelled in our library for appropriate on-air play. We very much prefer to avoid listener complaints because your Gothic nu-folk revival track had some particularly explicit, gratuitous, or grotesque language.

  9. Are you local? Artists from Vancouver Island, the Sunshine Coast, or Lower Mainland please check the Local Artist checkbox. This will ensure your release is given priority and get on the radio faster.

  10. Is this CANCON? Please also indicate via checkbox if your release has Canadian Content. See CANCON and MAPL below.

  11. Is this FemCon, QueerCon, Indigicon, FrancoCon, AfroCon? See definitions below.

  12. Genre and subgenre? Please give us an idea of what broad genre you fit into, then use the sub-genre field to get specific.

  13. If you are a local or independent artist who needs assistance submitting digitally, get in touch with the Music Department via music@chly.ca or by calling us at (250) 716-3410.

Physical Submissions

📷 Volunteer Music Librarian Mike Witty handles physical submissions.

Please fill in the form on this page so that we know you have sent us an album in the mail. Doing so gives us a heads up that your album is coming, and saves us some time with data entry.

If you have band swag (stickers, pins, even the odd shirt), please consider sending it along with your album. Our volunteers and members love that stuff, and it is helpful in prize packages to help raise money to operate our non-profit radio station.

Send your album and/or swag to us via snail(🐌) mail addressed to:

“Hey you hose heads” at CHLY 101.7FM
#2, 34 Victoria Cres
Nanaimo BC V9R 5B8
Canada.

Tracking

Once we’ve received your submission, it will go into review rotation where CHLY volunteers and staff ensure it’s appropriate for our library and airwaves. This process is about fit, not merit, so don’t take it personally if we don’t end up doing anything with your release. CHLY aims to promote music not supported by mainstream media and we do take this into account when reviewing music.

CHLY is an eclectic-freeform radio station, which means most of our programmers are volunteers and have the freedom to choose the music they play, though we do highlight submissions they might like. Once your album has been added to our library, it’s all up to the programmers. Our job is to make music available to the programmers, not to tell them what to play.

CANCON and MAPL?

To qualify as Canadian content (CanCon or CANCON), a musical selection must generally fulfill at least two of the following conditions: 

M (Music): The music is composed entirely by a Canadian.

A (Artist): The music is, or the lyrics are, performed principally by a Canadian.

P (Performance): The musical selection consists of a live performance that is recorded wholly in Canada, or performed wholly in Canada and broadcast live in Canada.

L (Lyrics): The lyrics are written entirely by a Canadian.

There are four special cases where a musical selection may also qualify as Canadian content: 

  • It was recorded before January 1972 and meets one of the above conditions;

  • It is an instrumental performance of a musical composition written or composed by a Canadian;

  • It is a performance of a musical composition that a Canadian has composed for instruments only;

  • It was performed live or recorded after September 1, 1991 and, in addition to meeting the criterion for either artist or production, a Canadian who has collaborated with a non-Canadian receives at least half of the credit for both music and lyrics – according to the records of a recognized performing rights society, such as SOCAN (Canada) or Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI), American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) and SESAC (United States).

Other Content Labels

CHLY 101.7 in alignment with the NCRA and many other stations across Canada encourages hosts and producers to incorporate QueerCon, FemCon, IndigiCon, FrancoCon, and AfroCon into their programs, following similar principles of the MAPL system for CanCon.

To qualify for any of the content labels listed above, the musical selection must fulfill two of the following conditions: be composed by, performed by, or written by someone who is part of that group. 

  • FemCon—by someone who identifies as a woman;

  • QueerCon—by someone who identifies as LGBTQ2+;

  • IndigiCon—by someone who is Indigenous North American or of Indigenous North American descent;

  • FrancoCon—by someone who is a Francophone (they speak or sing in French);

  • AfroCon—by someone who is African or of African descent.

Emailing us if the Music Submission Form doesn’t work

If you cannot use the form send your album or single zip file to us at submissions@chly.ca with all the information we ask for in the form.

Music Submission Form

We receive hundreds of submissions in a week so please understand that you may not hear back from us.