On any given day I get sent maybe 20-25 messages through one communications channel or other, with links to new sites or apps. Most of them are of no value to me at all. Maybe I’m growing old. A friend sent me a link today; I can usually rely on him to send me interesting things, so I took a look. This, despite the site and app having one of those oh-so-oughties names.
I tried it. Not having to register in order to try it out helped, that was a big plus for me. Chose Canada, Slow, 1970s. And up came Neil Young and Vampire Blues. After a while switched to India, stayed Slow and 1970s. And I was served Ananda Shankar and Raghupati. Registered straightaway. Downloaded the app as well. I like being able to vary how I want to engage with such things.
It’s still in beta, and I’m still learning about the site. Some categories are empty. I have no idea how many people have uploaded music, but that number feels low at present, I see the same names come up a few times. That may have to do with the selections I’m making.
I’m intrigued by the Share and by the Buy options song by song; the prominence given to the uploader suggests that over time this is going to become a blip.fm with an edgier UI.
The ability to time-travel around a music site is itself not new; neither is the serendipity offered in various forms. I couldn’t help but smile when I saw India turn to British India when I chose 1930. But being served Yom Hashabat by Nathan Solomon Satimkar was, to say the least, unusual.
Fascinating.
Radiooooo feels a bit like the first time I came across a food hall at a mall in the US. I was like a child in a sweetshop when I realised that I could choose to have something sensibly spicy while other family members could do their own thing, and we could still sit together and eat together.
That’s how I feel about the site right now. It’s fascinating to be able to mix genres so easily. It’s almost as if someone decided to build a mechanism by which each one of us could design our own StumbleUpon for music.
The ease with which I can get to, discover, shuffle through disparate times and places and genres is very attractive. There’s a long-tail aspect that soothes me, I’m not a hit-culture fan. I am even less a hit-culture fan when people I haven’t learnt to trust make the choices for me, but that’s another story.
I haven’t uploaded anything yet, nor shared anything so far. I’m still in early explorer mode.
But what I’ve seen so far, I like.
Radiooooo has possibilities. And I shall continue experimenting, and watch with interest.