Dear fellow Internet radio fans:

I discovered Internet radio shortly after Apple introduced iTunes and I began browsing the various genres available. I was amazed at how much variety was out there and at the high quality of most of the sites. Although my very eclectic musical tastes took me everywhere from opera to Celtic to Hawaiian to Persian, I soon settled on Radio Paradise as my top choice based on the extremely high quality of the station in all respects, but mostly because Bill Goldsmith’s widely ranging tastes and playlist so closely matched my own.

Like many in my generation (I’m now 46) I had been an avid FM radio listener in the seventies and eighties, but had pretty much lost track of the contemporary music scene as FM radio settled into either classic rock or the current pop or rap. I already had all of the old Doors and Beatles albums I could use and Britney Spears, Boyz 2 Men and Puff Daddy really left me cold. For about ten years I didn’t really buy any new rock albums except for the occasional new release from the likes of Joe Jackson or Suzanne Vega.

But then Radio Paradise opened my ears to what was really new and good in music and I realized that rock music had continued
progressing, but that FM radio (and hence me) had just missed it. I was turned on to new and exciting artists such as Vienna Teng and Josh Ritter and other more established artists who just hadn’t made much mainstream airplay like Greg Brown or Beth Orton. I also really listened for the first time to music from people like Beck or the White Stripes who I had certainly heard of but never really appreciated. And Radio Paradise even reintroduced me to classics like Neil Young or Leonard Cohen and gave me my first listen to people like Norah Jones or Lily Allen.

Since finding Radio Paradise I have purchased at least a hundred “singles” from iTunes (just like the old days of 45’s) and
dozens of CDs from artists like those mentioned above plus Tori Amos, Madeleine Peyroux, Bruce Cockburn, etc. With small children in the house I don’t go to too many concerts, but in a couple of weeks I’ll be hearing Vienna Teng in concert for the first time.

I still love to “flip through the dial” at Live365 and I do listen to FM radio at home and in the car — but really only to NPR,
classical music or the local traffic reports. My main radio station is certainly Radio Paradise and I am looking for the right stereo
component to allow me to play it and other Internet radio through my home stereo system instead of just on the computer. If American Internet radio were to disappear (and let’s do everything we can to help make sure it doesn’t!), I still would never go back to overly commercialized broadcast radio. I would probably end up finding stations in Europe or Canada or just falling back on my CD and LP collection like I did in the 90’s. Neither of which would do much to support the US music industry.

And finally my own rant on the RIAA and CRB situation. It is extremely short sighted as well as greedy of the RIAA to try this
reprehensible tactic. If they succeed then not only will they lose their existing revenue stream as domestic Internet radio stations
shut down, but they will lose out on the money that Internet radio fans spend on buying music. They worry that people will just
download the music streaming across their computers instead of paying for it, but that has to be a very small leak and certainly making the stations pay for listeners’ cheapness and disregard of copyright law is not the way to rectify the situation.

Hans Krimm
Silver Spring, MD