Radiooooo: How to Travel Through Time Auditorily

It’s Monday morning, you’re beginning your workweek, but you can’t find any song you like to kickstart your day. 

Spotify’s Discover Weekly recommends more of the same, and you’re eagerly looking for something new. 

Like many of you, I frequently struggle to find new and enjoyable music to listen to. 

Starting this blog with a country list and newsletter attempts to solve this problem for myself and others, but the challenge will surely resurface at times.  

Luckily for you, today there’s some light at the end of the tunnel, and this light is called Radiooooo.

radiooooo app

Discovering Radiooooo and Interviewing Benjamin

I got to know about Radiooooo after several friends recommended it. 

The link with Cultural Reads was obvious, so I decided to reach out to Benjamin. 

I had played around with the app for a while now, read articles about it, and spent several evenings enthusiastically discussing it with my housemate. 

I was excited to share this with my readers and decided to reach out to Moreau. 

As he’s very passionate about sharing culture, it was not difficult to get an interview with him. 

Enjoy our conversation below and get some first-hand insights into Radiooooo and its founder!

Radiooooo

Radiooooo: Time-travel and Surfing the Music Waves

Radiooooo is an application showing the world per country and decade (from 1900 until now). 

If you select a location and era, the app will start playing music from that place and time. 

Radiooooo also offers a more detailed breakdown with slow, fast, and weird music options or unusual playlists such as “Guilty Pleasures” and “Broken Hearts”.

The idea started in 2012 when Radiooooo’s founder, Benjamin Moreau, was test-driving his dad’s new vintage car.

The car had wooden radio and a magic vibe, but when Ben turned it on, a wave of commercial music directly broke the spell.

That’s when the initiative came to life.

Why not create a platform that will take you back in time auditorily?

1. How do you make sure that song submissions fit Radiooooo’s unique style?


We are four curators at Radiooooo, and we have a filter system with different levels; we just listen to every track and fight for each one inside our office 🙂

2. How do you decide which songs were important for an era in a country?

Important is not really a criterion; we decide to accept a track when it « touches » us, emotionally speaking.

3. Why do some countries have more songs than others?

Sometimes, there are not so many tracks available like in Africa at the beginning of the last century, for technical reasons..sometimes it’s because we need diggers in the area…!

radiooooo app

4. Do you have any personal favorites? Either songs or artists, or a time for a particular country?

Difficult to say…it depends on the mood of the day. I personally love the last decade of Mexico’s electronic music and 80s Korean disco or Italy in the 60s 🙂

5. What are the best tools to discover new music besides the Radiooooo app?

Friends!

6. What are you most proud of when you see where Radiooooo is right now?

It just started to look like the exact idea I had in my mind at the very beginning eight years ago in front of an empty desk and a piece of paper!

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7. Where would you like to see Radiooooo 10 years from now?

I would like to encourage more people all around the world to share their cultural gems, so the same but with a bigger audience! (we have 500,000 monthly users today)

8. What would your advice be for people who love making, discovering, or mixing music?

Just get pleasure with your creations. Marketing and other things are not the key.

9. What is an unusual or absurd artist that you love?

Mmm, there are a looooot 🙂 Maybe Raymond Scott, Bolis Pupul, and Raga Lalit.

Radiooooo

10. What record is your most special possession and why?

Pfff…it’s too difficult to say. I have so many records that are so special to me on Radiooooo. Maybe something very simple like Charles Trenet’s Douce France because it just instantly kicks me into another time. A time where everything tastes delicious. Of course, this is not real, but it is the magic of music, a fantasy, and it makes me cry for no reason each time I listen to it 🙂

11. If you could have a giant billboard somewhere with anything on it, what would it say?

“Plaisir d’offrir, Joie de recevoir!”

This phrase roughly translates to “Pleasure to give, Joy to receive” and is Radiooooo’s anthem.

Ready To Travel?

Are you ready to rave to Mexico’s last decade of techno music, find yourself at a Korean Disco party in the 80s, or on a Piazza in Italy in the 60s?

If the answer is yes, join the 500,000 users on the Radiooooo’s website or Radiooooo App.

Radiooooo also has a cool Instagram Account with stories about artists.

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