DanceRadio.ca is transmitting again.
The station first came online in 2009 with a straightforward idea: give long-form electronic music room to breathe. Programmes arrived from working DJs and producers, sets ran as complete journeys, and an independent signal from Ottawa connected local dance floors with listeners far beyond the city.
In 2015, a catastrophic injury caused the station to go into rest mode. The files were archived, the live site went dark, and for months the domain sat silent. But DanceRadio itself had not disappeared. Its history was still there, scattered across backups and old site builds, waiting to be put back together properly.
Rebuilding from the archive
The relaunch began with preservation. We recovered 1,026 files and 17 years of programming history, copied everything into a protected working archive, and checked it against its source. The surviving material included program audio, original station imaging, website artwork, submission records and pieces of several generations of DanceRadio.ca.
That history shaped the new site. This is not an imitation of an old page and it is not a generic radio template. The current design borrows its energy from DanceRadio's flyer culture, program cards and magazine years: hard editorial typography, layered artwork and the visual language of a station that has actually lived through several eras of electronic music.
The broadcast system was rebuilt at the same time on new, hardened infrastructure. Email intake is now automated and improved, a private Control Room manages scheduling and submissions, and the station operates inside a hardened network of its own. Every listener joins one shared live transmission rather than starting a personal copy of the last program they heard. Shows rotate by program, station IDs separate the sets, and longer weekly features have their own evening slots.
A current station, not a museum
The vault matters, but DanceRadio is not back simply to replay its past. We did not start fresh. Four long-time shows—Solar Power Sessions, Laurent Schark Selection, The Rush and My House Radio Show—anchor the current rotation, weighted toward the newest material and shows. The archive runs deep: original station IDs from ten DJs, recovered cover art, flyer partnerships and the real voices that built DanceRadio. New submissions continue to arrive through shows@danceradio.ca, where audio is deduplicated, validated and approved before it reaches the live library.
The editorial desk is returning too. DanceRadio's earlier websites carried artist profiles, program notes, scene coverage and station news. This new Features section brings that voice back with one useful piece at a time: listening guides, conversations with program makers, properly contextualised archive finds and stories from the station's next chapter.
The next chapter is live
The infrastructure is solid. Updated automatically through Cloudflare, backups run nightly, and the live stream is resilient and monitored every five minutes. There is still more work ahead: the program board will keep evolving, more of the archive will be identified, and the newsroom will grow carefully rather than publishing filler for the sake of activity.
We are not rewriting history—we are continuing it.
For now, press play. The signal is back, and everyone is hearing the same moment together.
Listen live: https://danceradio.ca
More DanceRadio features