Radio Paradise
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Radio Paradise is a popular and pioneering Internet radio station that defines itself as "eclectic online rock radio". The channel differs from most FM channels and other Internet stations in that the music played is not limited to any specific genre but instead represents great variety. Radio Paradise mostly plays different styles of pop and rock music, but occasionally also everything from jazz to classical to electronic music and world music. All of the styles are DJ-mixed. Radio Paradise is a for-profit business. Rather than selling their service or running commercials, they financially support the station through donations, merchandise and purchases via on-line stores.
Radio Paradise streams are available in MP3, HE-AAC (AAC+), WMA and RealAudio in various bitrates, and can be accessed through Apple's iTunes radio tuner service as well as the SHOUTcast Radio search feature available in the Winamp player and the Shoutcast web site. The station can also be found under the "Cool Streams" playlist built into the Amarok Media Player. It is consistently one of the most popular stations on the Radio Roku service. The record number of concurrent listeners (as of January 2006) has passed the 10,000 mark.
The web site offers listeners the ability to rate and comment on individual songs on the playlist, as well as songs on the Listener Review Channel, which consists of songs uploaded by listeners to be considered for airplay.
Aside from providing a varied selection of music, Radio Paradise also has a lively on-line community via its song comments, forums, journals, comments section and contests (through donations) on the web site. More than 30,000 users have registered from various parts of the world, and the community is growing daily.
The web site uses customized open-source software components for most of its sections. Some of the technologies used include PHP and BBCode.
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[edit] History
The station was started in February 2000 by Bill Goldsmith and his wife Rebecca Goldsmith. It derives its name and is operated from Paradise, California. Bill has been a DJ at various stations (including KPIG, KFAT, KLRB, WCAS, and KPOI) since 1971, as well as working as a radio station manager, and a radio & TV engineer.
Radio Paradise was featured in a TIME magazine article of April 19, 2004 on the future of radio through an interview with Bill.
As of March 2006 a higher quality 192 kbit/s mp3 stream was available. It was discontinued in January 2007, but later reinstated on August 14, 2007.
April 2006 introduced the new Listeners World Map, showing the numbers and locations of listeners across the world.
In June 2006 Radio Paradise started a test with a new stream delivery method using Octoshape for its 192 kbit/s stream.
As of September 2006 Radio Paradise provides a 128 kbit/s AAC+ stream as a test.
A number of both newspaper and on-line articles have reviewed the notable uniqueness and quality of the station in the relatively new medium that is the Internet. Some of those are listed below in the news section.
[edit] Threat of the 2007 royalty rates increase
On March 6th 2007, The Copyright Royalty Board increased royalty rates which would potentially raise the station's royalty fees tenfold. Bill Goldsmith has spoken about this as a serious threat to the station and urged his listeners to sign an online petition[1] in an effort to save the station[2]. In subsequent negotiations, royalty rates were established that allowed Radio Paradise and other Internet radio stations to continue operations.[1]
[edit] External links
[edit] In the news
- Time Magazine article
- Interview with Bill Goldsmith on Planet Geek!
- Paradise Around The World
- And Now For Some *Real* Radio: The death of corporate rock radio. Readers extol glorious alternatives. Listen up!
- Surfing with Alex: Radio Paradise indeed
- Heavenly sounds of radioparadise.com
- Internet radio offers sex and sermons
- Bill's Comments on the US Copyright Office new Internet Radio royalty rates
