Ghost World was one of those memorable movies that had more of an influence on me than I expected. The flick was mixed in amongst Tarantino’s best on constant rotation on IFC back in the day, and I studied the movie based on the comic by Daniel Clowes more than my classes, memorizing all of the quotable lines from the film and trying to adopt Enid’s (Thora Birch) aesthetic. I even tried to dance along with the indie darling to the iconic opening song, “Jaan Pehchaan Ho” (which you’ve probably heard in a Heineken commercial or two). But who knew all those memories would come flooding back via a music player?
Radiooooo serves as the Tardis of music, navigating not only top tunes from as far back as the 1900s from countries on almost every continent. With a hand-drawn map interface, users can easily select a destination, a year (broken up by decade), and a mood (Who wants to get weird?) before their ears are transported to another era. Yes, you can still listen to today’s hits on the site as well. But don’t expect to spend your time scrolling until you find the right one, it’s all about happy accidents, and you’ll likely find yourself running back to get the name of an unexpected music must or artist for your next playlist. Plus it even allows you create a musical road trip through time via its Taxi Mode.
Inspired by a ride in a white 1966 Renault Caravelle, founder, artist, and DJ, Benjamin Moreau found today’s hits enough to burst him from his happy bubble of nostalgia and turn to co-founder Raphaël Hamburger, a music producer and soundtrack supervisor who had amassed a vast collection of music from all over the world, for help bringing the concept to life in 2013 with an Indiegogo campaign. According to The New Yorker, the team created a community of contributors and curators for the crowd-sourced songs that populate the site with everything from ’60s garage rock from India to contemporary whale songs in Antartica and plenty more in between with decisions made based on how the songs made you feel at first listen.“The ability of a song to touch us instantaneously, in a completely subjective way. I would almost say in a naive way . . . We are not trying to apply ethno-musical criteria. We are keeping what we believe are true musical treasures,” Moreau told the magazine back in March.
Given the incredibly cool concept, I was surprised that I didn’t hear much about it before, save for posts that began circulating in the last few months on Tumblr. While there are so many iterations of Spotify and Pandora out there, this one stands out for its sheer breadth and sense of discovery. It’s not out to curate a collection based on your current tastes but meant to open you up to something more that might not be in your wheelhouse. After all, the find is half the fun, right? And that’s something everybody can jam to!