Radio Paradise
Encyclopedia
Internet radio
Internet radio is an audio service transmitted via the Internet...
station that identifies itself as an "eclectic
Eclecticism
Eclecticism is a conceptual approach that does not hold rigidly to a single paradigm or set of assumptions, but instead draws upon multiple theories, styles, or ideas to gain complementary insights into a subject, or applies different theories in particular cases.It can sometimes seem inelegant or...
online rock radio" station. The channel differs from most FM channels and other Internet stations in that the music
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
played is not limited to a specific genre, instead representing great variety. Radio Paradise plays different styles of pop
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...
and rock music
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
, but occasionally other genres from jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
to classical to electronic music
Electronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
and world music
World music
World music is a term with widely varying definitions, often encompassing music which is primarily identified as another genre. This is evidenced by world music definitions such as "all of the music in the world" or "somebody else's local music"...
. All of the styles are DJ-mixed, often with passages of several tracks played back-to-back (and faded between each other), chosen for their suitability or thematic relevance as opposed purely to random playlisting. Whilst Radio Paradise is a for-profit business, it does not broadcast commercials but is financially supported through donations from listeners. It is known familiarly as "RP".
Radio Paradise streams
Streaming media
Streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a streaming provider.The term "presented" is used in this article in a general sense that includes audio or video playback. The name refers to the delivery method of the medium rather...
are available in MP3
MP3
MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...
, HE-AAC
HE-AAC
High-Efficiency Advanced Audio Coding is a lossy data compression scheme for digital audio defined as a MPEG-4 Audio profile in ISO/IEC 14496-3. It is an extension of Low Complexity AAC optimized for low-bitrate applications such as streaming audio...
(AAC+), WMA
Windows Media Audio
Windows Media Audio is an audio data compression technology developed by Microsoft. The name can be used to refer to its audio file format or its audio codecs. It is a proprietary technology that forms part of the Windows Media framework. WMA consists of four distinct codecs...
and RealAudio
RealAudio
RealAudio is a proprietary audio format developed by RealNetworks and first released in April 1995. It uses a variety of audio codecs, ranging from low-bitrate formats that can be used over dialup modems, to high-fidelity formats for music. It can also be used as a streaming audio format, that is...
in various bitrates, and can be accessed through Apple's iTunes
ITunes
iTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....
radio tuner service, the SHOUTcast
SHOUTcast
SHOUTcast is cross-platform proprietary software for streaming media over the Internet. The software, developed by Nullsoft , allows digital audio content, primarily in MP3 or HE-AAC format, to be broadcast to and from media player software, enabling the creation of Internet radio "stations"...
Radio search feature in the Winamp
Winamp
Winamp is a media player for Windows-based PCs and Android devices, written by Nullsoft, now a subsidiary of AOL. It is proprietary freeware/shareware, multi-format, extensible with plug-ins and skins, and is noted for its graphical sound visualization, playlist, and media library features.Winamp...
player, the Shoutcast web site, and in the "Cool Streams" playlist built into the Amarok Media Player
Amarok (audio)
Amarok is a cross-platform free and open source music player for KDE, but is released independently of the central KDE Software Compilation release cycle...
. It is one of the most popular stations on the Radio Roku
Roku
Roku , is an American, privately held, consumer electronics company that sells home digital media products. The Company is based in Saratoga, California.- Company profile and products :...
service. Available on the Logitech Squeezebox sound system, the station is ranked as a favorite/recommended station by most of their developers and engineers.
The web site offers a real-time "recently played" facility affording listeners the ability to rate and comment on individual songs on the playlist, as well as songs on the Listener Review Channel, consisting of songs uploaded by listeners to be considered for airplay.
Aside from providing a varied selection of music, Radio Paradise also has a lively online community via its song comments, forums, journals, comments section and contests (through donations) on the web site. More than 93,000 users (as of June 1st, 2011) have registered from all regions of the world.
The web site and playout systems use Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
and customized open-source software
Open-source software
Open-source software is computer software that is available in source code form: the source code and certain other rights normally reserved for copyright holders are provided under a software license that permits users to study, change, improve and at times also to distribute the software.Open...
components for most of its sections, a system devised by Goldsmith initially for KPIG's playout system . Some of the technologies currently used include PHP
PHP
PHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document...
and BBCode
BBCode
BBCode or Bulletin Board Code is a lightweight markup language used to format posts in many message boards. The available tags are usually indicated by square brackets surrounding a keyword, and they are parsed by the message board system before being translated into a markup language that web...
.
History
The station was started in February 2000 by Bill Goldsmith and his wife Rebecca Goldsmith. It is operated from their home in ParadiseParadise, California
Paradise is an incorporated town in Butte County, in the northwest foothills of California's Central Valley, in the Sierra. The town is considered part of the Chico Metropolitan Area. The population was 26,218 at the 2010 census, down from 26,408 at the 2000 census...
, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, from which it derives its name. Bill has been a DJ at various stations (including KPIG
KPIG
KPIG-FM is a radio station located near the city of Santa Cruz, California, USA. Founded in 1988, the studio is based in Watsonville, California, and broadcasts to the counties of Santa Cruz and Monterey. It also has a radio repeater on 94.9 MHz FM in San Luis Obispo County as KPYG...
, KFAT, KLRB, WCAS, and KPOI) since 1971, as well as working as a radio station manager, and a radio & TV engineer. In August 1995 Goldsmith inaugurated the world's first full-time webcast
Webcast
A webcast is a media presentation distributed over the Internet using streaming media technology to distribute a single content source to many simultaneous listeners/viewers. A webcast may either be distributed live or on demand...
at KPIG using Xing Streamworks software.
Radio Paradise was featured in a TIME
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
magazine article of April 11, 2004 on "The Revolution In Radio".
April 2006, RP introduced the Listeners World Map, showing the numbers and locations of listeners across the world.
In June 2006 Radio Paradise began trial runs of Octoshape
Octoshape
Octoshape is a proprietary streaming media platform. It uses throughput optimization technology to deliver HD quality streams and to break through congestion in the last mile to provide more resilient delivery...
for its 192 kbit/s MP3 stream; currently it is available via standard Shoutcast.
In September 2006, Radio Paradise began a 128 kbit/s AAC+
MPEG-4 Part 3
MPEG-4 Part 3 or MPEG-4 Audio is the third part of the ISO/IEC MPEG-4 international standard developed by Moving Picture Experts Group. It specifies audio coding methods...
stream.
Threat of the 2007 royalty rates increase
On March 6, 2007, the Copyright Royalty BoardCopyright Royalty Board
The Copyright Royalty Board is a U.S. system of three Copyright Royalty Judges who determine rates and terms for copyright statutory licenses and make determinations on distribution of statutory license royalties collected by the United States Copyright Office of the Library of Congress...
increased royalty rates, which would have raised the station's royalty fees tenfold. Bill Goldsmith spoke about this as a serious threat to the station and urged his listeners to sign an online petition to save the station. In subsequent negotiations, royalty rates were established that allowed Radio Paradise and other Internet radio stations to continue operations.