The Museum of Canadian Music, home of CitizenFreak.com, works to preserve, document and share the full scope of Canada’s recorded music heritage. Robert Williston founded the Museum in 2007. Today it is one of Canada’s largest independent archives devoted to Canadian recorded music.
The collection holds more than 140,000 physical Canadian music artifacts and approximately 1.2 million sound and image files. CitizenFreak.com presents more than 76,500 public pages documenting over 6,000 Canadian artists, from early Indigenous recordings and jazz pioneers to punk, soul, hip-hop, folk, rock, avant-garde and contemporary independent music.
The Museum of Canadian Music exists to collect, preserve, document, research, and provide public access to Canada’s recorded music heritage in all its breadth, including regional, independent, historically overlooked, and at-risk recordings and related cultural materials.
Through its physical and digital collections, artist and community engagement, historical research, digitization, preservation work, and public platform, the Museum works to ensure that Canadian music history remains accessible to present and future generations.
The Museum embraces all genres, styles, eras, traditions, and forms of Canadian musical expression and is committed to representing the full cultural diversity of Canada.
This includes the musical histories and traditions of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples; Francophone and Anglophone communities; and immigrant and diasporic communities across every region of the country. It also includes racialized communities; LGBTQ+ artists and communities; women and gender-diverse artists; people with disabilities; and regional, rural, northern, and remote communities, along with other artists and communities whose contributions have historically been underrepresented, underdocumented, or overlooked.
The Museum’s mandate is national in scope and is guided by a simple principle:
Every part of Canada’s musical heritage deserves the opportunity to be preserved, understood, and shared.
A particular focus of the Museum is identifying, recovering and preserving rare, overlooked and historically significant Canadian recordings and related materials, especially those that are difficult to find or unavailable through other public sources. Over many years, the Museum has acquired, recovered and digitized tens of thousands of 78s, 45s, LPs, cassettes, CDs and recordings in other physical formats. Many are rare, out of print or long forgotten, and some may survive in only a handful of copies. Our digital transfers are made to a consistent, high standard, and many of these recordings have never been reissued or appeared on any streaming service.
Each artist and title page places the music in its historical context, bringing together biographies, information about artists’ backgrounds and the origins of their recordings, recording and release details, musician and production credits, and high-resolution scans of covers, labels, sleeves and inserts.
The Museum’s purpose is educational, historical and preservation-based. We do not sell or distribute digital media, and we respect Canadian copyright law and the creators, publishers, labels and rights holders behind every recording. CitizenFreak.com holds a SOCAN music licence.
We encourage visitors to support Canadian artists directly by buying their music and merchandise, going to their shows and following their official channels.
Canadian music was made by people of every culture, language, region and identity, and much of it was made far from major labels, commercial radio and established institutions. We document that music with accuracy and respect so that artists who received little recognition in their time hold their proper place in the record.
Artists, families, collectors, researchers and community members are invited to contribute recordings, photographs, corrections and history, and to help shape how their stories are told.
2026 marked a turning point in the Museum’s history with the establishment of the CitizenFreak Canadian Music Society, the federally incorporated not-for-profit organization that governs the Museum and supports its preservation, research, education and public-access work. The Society is building relationships with governments, cultural institutions, foundations, private supporters, artists and collectors to secure the Museum’s long-term future.
Free public access remains central to the Museum’s mission. CitizenFreak.com is committed to providing free access to Canada’s recorded music heritage, so that students, researchers, artists, collectors and music lovers can explore and discover Canadian music without financial barriers.
The Museum is focused on securing a permanent facility to preserve and protect its extensive physical collection, expanding its preservation and research work, building partnerships, and creating new ways for Canadians to discover, experience and engage with their musical heritage.
Thank you for exploring the Museum, supporting Canadian artists and helping keep Canada’s musical story alive.
Robert Williston
Founder, President and Director
Museum of Canadian Music
CitizenFreak Canadian Music Society