Review of the App Radiooooo

Last week’s update to version 3.0 is as good excuse as any to recommend the app Radiooooo, available for free on the web or in the Android or Apple stores. There’s nothing else quite like it: it’s a music browser that will play you music from any country on earth from any decade in the history of recorded music. The new version includes a “Taxi” function where you can queue up specific countries and decades to take you on a journey (lest you you get bored with Cambodian boogie from the 1970s and want to mix it up with some matador music from 1920s Barcelona). There are three modes you can select: slow, fast, and weird. (You’re gonna want to try out “weird,” trust me.)

But what really makes it essential is the shuffle mode. Play it for those arrogant kids who say they “like everything” when you ask them what they listen to. None of us have the faintest clue about the staggering (and often hilarious) diversity of the entire world’s recorded music from 1900 to the present. Just a random sample from today brought me a plaintive ballad from 1950’s Algeria, a song from a kids’ TV show from 1970’s France, and a seductive samba from 2010’s Brazil.

Radiooooo has been around since 2013. Listeners from around the world contribute the recordings (they are encouraged to send only their favorites, not entire albums), and every track is reviewed and curated by a team of editors. There’s no GarageBand crap recorded in ten minutes by somebody in their basement. Everything is purportedly legal and licensed. If you happen to collect 78s of Liberian rumbas, or indigenous country/pop from Canada in the 1970s, then Radiooooo wants to hear from you!

(Originally published on the Arts Fuse, January 1, 2025)