Wednesday, April 14, 2004

An aural oasis known as Radio Paradise

A little mindless blog surfing led me to an interesting site you may wish to explore on your own.

Radio Paradise an internet streaming radio station, features an eclectic play list of music. Kind of takes you back to the days of free form radio, back when FM was in its infancy. The interesting aspect of the Radio Paradise site is that you can make comments about the songs you are hearing as they are being played. You can also check back and see what other listeners have thought of the song when it last played. It serves as a rather neat approach to user friendly radio.

There are other features as well including things such as a listener journal you can share in the day to day tidbits of the author's life, your chance to be the busy body you always wanted to be. There is a whack of forums to jump into if you wish. The site also features a spot to just toss in some random comments that may pop into your mind. Or you can just listen to the music.

The play list is my favorite toy of the moment; it lists the entire rotation of music over the last six hours. If you hear a song that you find interesting you can click on it and see what the other Radio Paradise folks thought of it. For those with lots of disposable income and a certain moral distaste for the concept of downloading music, you can purchase the artist's CD direct from the site.

One would suspect that this is a site which would have the full endorsement of the RIAA. But don't let that stop you from listening; it's worth a few hours of your time used simply as background music while you work on your blog.

It apparently has received a positive review in Time Magazine which has sent thousands of listeners it's way in the last week or so, causing a bit of distress to the sites servers at times. And while the days of free form radio would never have dared been mentioned in Time, it's a whole new world out there now. Aging boomers still want to be hip, here's their chance to listen in to a wide variety of tunes and a lot more.

Radio Paradise it's an interesting convergence of music and internet, worth checking out.

No comments: