The Best Mix of Eclectic Music on earth—listener-supported and non-commercial – Radio Paradise Review

If you are a either a grownup, a geezer, or even a kid wanting to discover a unique mix of music, carefully and thoughtfully selected and segued, this is what you need. Musical connoisseur, and amazingly knowledgeable curator, Bill Goldsmith has spent decades as a music/programming director, since the last half of the 1960s. Before that, he was likely a kid like me, for whom transistor radios were our only portable sound systems, and he was listening to, and absorbing remarkable music from back then, but his scope of music has monumental depth and breadth. He can take you from Mozart to Vivaldi, from Howlin’ Wolf to Etta James, Led Zeppelin to the lesser known album cuts of the ‘Stones. (When was the last time you heard “Parachute Woman” on the radio? Moreover, and most importantly, most radio today is overrun with music produced by cats behind some giant mixing board, where they all try to emulate Beyonce or PitBull, selecting whatever beat d’jour is popular among too many radio stations, crammed with divas and gangsta wannabees, relying solely on canned or disingenuous auto-tuned vocals. But Bill sifts through these layers of audio pap to locate a fantastic selection of new, and obscure talents—whose audiences choose to live outside of the bland, boring contemporary radio. And you don’t hear the same song rotated once every 2-4 hours. He’s introduced me to a number of musical giants, from this Century and even this decade, such as Spoon, Elbow, the National, Jason Isbell, Kasabian, the War in Drugs, Future Islands, Tame Impala, Younger Brother, Harry Manx and others that nobody, not even in my circle of friends, had even heard of, much less could turn me onto. Technically, perhaps the best feature of this online radio station is it’s feature for caching SEVERAL HOURS OF MUSIC at a shot. This feature allows you to take your music with you, WITHOUT AN INTERNET CONNECTION, or even wifi. You simply recharge the cache whenever you want, via the app, when you have wifi, like at home. I listen to it while bicycling, and the app helps conserve the phone battery, since it doesn’t have to power the wifi, or if you’re in the boonies, beyond the reach of cell towers. Finally, with most music services you’re stuck with whatever song is playing until enough real time passes and the next one begins. But the APP has a feature called PSD: or “play something different.” Hitting it bumps it to a different tune, and you can even select different categories, such as more rocking, more mellow, & etc. This program is ESPECIALLY helpful in both commuting if you’re stuck with mindless giggling Morning Zoo DJs; road tripping, where you can’t get signal. Plus, for those of us who don’t have (or want to pay for) Satellite Radio, it allows you to hear out-standing music wherever you may go. Finally, the non-commercial aspect of the station is perhaps its greatest feature—no screaming ads for new car deals or detergent. I’ve been listening to RadioParadise since at least 2003, and I not only discover a ton of new music, but hear excellent old “underground”’artists, like Spirit and Hendrix, just during the course of writing this review on my phone. In an age where everybody wants everything free, this lets you listen to new and amazing music for free. To keep it going, every so often he’ll ask for donations, but unlike most public radio stations, he doesn’t forfeit his programming for those annoying week-long fundraising stints like all the NPR stations do. Over the years, I’ve made many donations to help him keep the music coming, and if you dig what he plays, or discover something new and honestly fresh or progressive, send him in a donation. Finally, when you like a tune you discover on his site, you can click through and buy it from Amazon or iTunes, and a sliver of your purchase price helps him keep paying the bills, keeps the station alive and breathing, and even gives you a little bump in your Karma-account. Download it now, and start playing it. And if you don’t like what you hear at the moment, hit the PSD button until you do! You can thank me later.
Review by Bisonwerks on Radio Paradise.