After 6 years at the cutting edge of Toronto’s underground and up-and-coming DJ scene, the city’s very own shipping container radio station is hanging up its headphones.
If there’s one thing Toronto does well, it’s music.
Sure, we’ve produced icons like Neil Young, Broken Social Scene, Rush and, oh yeah, these two guys named Drake and The Weeknd, but, moreover, the city has fostered a music community of creators and listeners alike that remains second to none to this day.
Since 2019, independent radio station ISO Radio has been a leader in the city when it comes to spotlighting up-and-coming new musicians and DJs, and they’ve been doing it all from inside a shipping container at Stackt Market.
“I think what has made ISO so special is that it brought together many people from different walks of life and corners of the music industry together,” Josephine Cruz, ISO’s Director of Community, tells blogTO.
“Sometimes the music and DJ scene can feel toxic, and especially in smaller cities like Toronto there can be a crabs in bucket mentality,” she adds, “but I always believed that we are stronger when we are together and I imagined ISO to be like a platform for us to all stand on together, lifting each other up.”
For the past six years, that’s exactly what the station has done, streaming their online radio broadcast, populated with underground artists, five days a week.
It’ll soon be the end of an era for the pioneering collective, though, as they recently took to ISO’s Instagram account to announce that April 2025 will be the final month of broadcasts for the station. After closing out the month, ISO Radio will be no more.
“To put it simply, we just truly felt like it was time to end this chapter,” Josephine tells blogTO. “Our operations team are all moving into different stages in our personal lives, and our priorities are shifting.”
Because ISO is, and has always been, a 100 per cent volunteer-run operation, everyone’s hearts and minds have to truly be in it for things to work out, and that’s not always possible when the tides of your life start changing.
“Running a community radio station is really is like running a startup that never gets out of the startup phase,” Josephine says.
“I know people probably wonder why we didn’t try to get someone else to run it, but it really just requires so much entrepreneurial thinking and problem solving that it would be nearly impossible to pass the torch. So I would rather close a chapter on a positive note and be happy and proud of all that we did over the past six years!”
“Our dream for this radio station was to create a platform for emerging artists and DJs in the city—a space where they could build community and feel a sense of belonging,” reads the caption of the Instagram post announcing ISO’s impending closure.
“We also wanted to offer curious music lovers a place to discover their next favorite DJ, to hear a song or a set curated by a human, in an increasingly algorithm-driven world.”
Suffice it to say, mission accomplished, although the flood of comments echoes my own thoughts that the end is coming far sooner than we’d ever hoped.
As for the future of ISO, Josephine tells blogTO that, while they hope to keep the community engaged and cohesive in some way, the team’s main focus right now is closing their last month of broadcasts out strong.
When asked whether ISO Radio could ever make a return, Josephine simply tells blogTO that “for now this is a firm end, but never say never!”
“But one thing that’s for sure is whatever we end up doing, we will keep the spirit of creative expression, connection and community that has been part of ISO’s fabric since the beginning, alive,” she adds.
You can catch ISO Radio’s final broadcasts online at iso.fm, and listen to past broadcasts on Mixcloud.
