Every now and then, I’ve found myself wondering what it would sound like if NPR Music decided to offer a Top 40 channel. Noncomm broadcasters around the world offer different versions of CHR that are sometimes straightforward and sometime the hip variant on the format that you wish existed in the U.S. (BBC Radio 1, Hungary’s MR Radio Petofi).

That’s why it was exciting to hear that Canada’s just-launched CBC Music portal was going to include 40 streaming radio stations, including a CHR format, “Pop 40.” CBC Music follows, by about two weeks, the launch of an ambitious music service by group broadcaster Astral Radio that was rolled out via the streaming players of its Top 40 stations. (The Astral service offers fewer format streams but a massive variety of on-demand music.)

Both the Astral and CBC sites are formidable, good looking offerings. Neither features user-generated stations and, as such, they’re not “Can-dora,” but they are both clearly looking to fill a music discovery franchise that is more wide-open in Canada, where neither Spotify nor Pandora are yet available. (Rdio is available there.)

Both are the sort of efforts that you wish U.S. broadcasters had made a long time ago—instead of wasting any more time on the “my programmed station vs. your music collection” argument. Both Astral and CBC are getting into the “your music collection” business, as U.S. radio should have long before iHeart Radio.

The CBC’s existing over-the-air Radio 2 (a mix of Triple-A and Classical blocks) and its even-more-eclectic Radio 3 (available on satellite radio and online) both have a U.S. following. As noted recently, they’ve become the sort of emissary for Canada’s well-regarded indie scene that Top 40 CKLW Detroit was for Canadian pop music in the ’70s. So I was curious to hear what CBC would do with Top 40 and, for that matter, with their decades channels.

Both Astral Media and CBC Music are mostly geo-blocked to the U.S. Both sites let you get as far as selecting streams (which never launch), and CBC Music shows the now playing information for the various channels. I won’t get much sympathy about that from Canadian programmers, who have frustrations of their own trying to listen to a lot of U.S. radio. Despite this, we were able to secure a First Listen to both CBC Music’s Pop 40 and ’70s decade channels. Besides Radio 2 and Radio 3, the all-Leonard Cohen channel, Complete Cohen, is also available in the U.S.

As you might expect from a portal with 40 side channels, the stations I heard—only a few days old at the time—were more streams than fully-programmed stations. Not only did artists repeat within a few songs of each other, but one song also showed up twice in under an hour on Pop 40.

The stations I heard were unhosted, lightly produced, and shared brief, female-voiced promos that ran at roughly the same time on both channels and differed only by ending with the appropriate station ID. One touted the “largest library of independent Canadian music in the world.” The other promo suggested that you could foster a 20-year relationship by making a playlist for that special person.

Even with the relative minimalism, there is some sign of a CBC aesthetic here, particularly in the ’70s channel which is as much Soft Classic Hits as Oldies. (Before actually hearing the channel, I did follow the music online and saw Nilsson’s “Me And My Arrow,” Carly Simon’s “That’s The Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be,” and Willie Nelson’s “Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain.”) The ’70s channel, by the way, is actually more like the “Rock’s Second Decade” channel as Sirius XM might put it, covering 1968 to 1979, while some late ’70s songs actually play on the ’80s channel.

Here’s CBC Music’s Pop 40 at 11:20 a.m. on Wednesday (15). (This segment, by the way, is actually based on the Now Playing widget, although I did actually listen to a separate stretch of Pop 40.)

State Of Shock, “Runaway” (Canadian, punk/pop act best known here for the Sirius XM Hits1 hit “Money Honey”)
Ke$ha, “Take It Off”
Keshia Chante, “Edit, Cut and Delete You” (Canadian R&B songstress of a decade’s standing goes for a harder, “Miss Independent” type of sound)
Danny Fernandes, “Addicted” (another Canadian rhythmic pop mainstay with one of his earliest hits)
Katy Perry, “The One That Got Away”
Coldplay, “Fix You”
Maroon 5 f/Christina Aguilera, “Moves Like Jagger”
Danny Fernandes f/Belly & Josh Ramsay, “Hit Me Up” (Canadian, teams Fernandes with the lead singer of pop/punkers Marianas Trench, and a more turbo-pop feel; one of the best records at Canadian CHR now)
David Guetta, “Where Them Girls At?”
Beyoncé “Crazy In Love”
Kreesha Turner, “I Could Stay” (Canadian R&B, and, yes, we have now heard from Keshia, Kreesha, and Ke$ha; there is also a Canadian pop act named Creature);
State Of Shock, “Have A Nice Day” (Canadian, midtempo and harder-rocking for them)
Harvey Stripes, “Shawty Got That” (Canadian rhythmic pop from 2009 that featured Jason Derulo)
Anjulie, “Brand New Chick” (Canadian)
Kristina Maria, “Let’s Play” (Canadian)
Selena Gomez, “Love You Like A Love Song”

Here’s CBC Music’s ’70s channel at 2:45 p.m. on Wednesday (15):

A Foot In Cold Water, “(Make Me Do) Anything You Want” (Canadian)
Gordon Lightfoot, “Sundown” (Canadian)
Rod Stewart, “You’re In My Heart (The Final Acclaim)”
Doobie Brothers, “Long Train Running”
Neil Young, “The Loner” (Canadian)
Rascals, “A Beautiful Morning”
10cc, “I’m Not In Love”
Roberta Flack, “Killing Me Softly With His Song”
Chambers Brothers, “Time Has Come Today”
Bob Dylan, “Tangled Up In Blue”
Wings, “Silly Love Songs”

The launch of CBC Music comes days after a ruling that Canadian Content requirements did not apply to the Internet. It’s interesting to note here that the stretch of Pop 40 described here was two-thirds Canadian—that’s nearly twice the amount of “Cancon” that most terrestrial PDs have to program.

By contrast, the ’70s channel monitor presented here is less than 30% Canadian, and I actually saw an earlier hour in which only one song out of 19 was Canadian. It is here that I must disclose having worked with some of Canada’s commercial Oldies/Greatest Hits FMs. But I speak only for myself here. And as longtime readers know, I’m not upset about hearing less Cancon for competitive reasons. I’m disappointed because I personally want to hear the same level of curation that goes into Radio 2 and Radio 3 applied to unearthing a lot of great Can-nuggets. If CBC Music’s ’70s channel isn’t going to play “Band Bandit” by Tundra, who is?

Going forward, while I understand why any on-demand music might be geo-blocked, I hope Canada’s rights-holders reconsider any terms that are keeping the CBC and Astral pre-programmed streams from giving Canadian music the same sort of international exposure as Radio 2 and Radio 3.

I’m also looking forward to more of the CBC Music channels developing into the same kind of full-fledged radio communities. For one thing, there is a need for a hipper version of North American CHR. NPR Music’s new iPad app offers six genre streams, including Hip-Hop/R&B, but no Top 40. And it will be interesting to see if CBC’s Pop 40 or NPR Music fills that need first.