For the last few years, I’ve been listening to AOL radio via Winamp. Firing up the occasional TGIF MP3 playlist, but for the most part Internet radio was on all day. About six months back, Winamp started to change, simplicity gave way to the new Bento skin and then AOL radio was replaced by CBS radio. The new interface to CBS radio doesn’t work very well and the software updates wrecked havoc on my WMB54G wireless listening pleasure.
So I went looking for a new music player and after reviewing the choices at hand, foobar2000 became my player. It works great with the WMB54G and it feels lightweight, like the Winamp of old. But what to do for Internet radio?
Radio Paradise is an independent station run by Bill & Rebecca Goldsmith from their Paradise California home. In the last couple of weeks, the 192k MP3 stream has turned me onto sounds I’ve never heard before and induced good memories of sounds I hadn’t heard in years. Their eclectic mix of music fits into my daily routine just fine.
The beauty of Internet radio is the lack of commercials and of course, the rotation of new music. On regular radio, if you listen to a station all day, chances are you’ll hear the same song a few times a day. Listen to the same station all week and it gets old rather quickly. Some Internet stations suffer from the same problem, I had to switch the channel on AOL radio every other day, or else it felt like Deja Vu. CBS radio is very much the same, regurgitated hits over and over again.
Bill and Rebecca have done Internet radio right, they’ve embraced a new medium with their unique style. Long live entrepreneurs!
You keep playing where you shouldn’t be playing
And you keep thinking that you’ll never get burnt
Well, I’ve just found me a brand new box of matches
And what he knows you ain’t had time to learn