RadioSure: It’s like going back to the 90s… Sort of.

Some readers will remember a time before iPods or Pandora. Let’s call it ‘the 90s’. We all had a boom box or a small radio of some sort. It was the number one item on Christmas lists for any 12 year old back then. Music was still decent, and having a way to listen to it was better. My own setup was a little Sony with 2 way, 20 watt speakers, a single tape deck and top mounted CD player. Man I had it made! I used that thing all the way into the following century.

But I digress. These days, music has changed (for the worse if you ask me) and the ways we consume it have changed too. Music is disposable now. It is constantly available en masse, and we have collectively evolved to treat it as such. Music is everywhere! Songs are available by the truckload, on tap from iPod, Zune, laptop, flash drive, cell phone and streaming 24/7 from servers around the world. We no longer have the 10 song mentality we were raised with. Back then it was understood that if you didn’t want to be spoon fed the top 40s all day, you’d have to go to the music store and buy 10 songs from a band you liked on a little shiny disc or a cassette tape. Those songs were to be listened to, and then listened to again and again because they cost money and effort, and were not easily replaceable. We have entered into the 10,000 song mentality. Music is cheap, and often free. It’s totally normal now to have thousands of songs in your possession that you have never heard and never will. If a song, or hundreds of songs are lost or damaged, they are freely and easily available for download or copy from a backup source. Gone are the days of the cherished 10 songs.

Another interesting notion that has developed in this new environment is that of explicit control. 90% of everything we consume musically is at our will. We don’t let the DJ decide any more. We have collections as massive as any mid 90s DJ ever did, and so we choose our music and make play lists for every possible mood or occasion. Well, sometimes it’s nice to relinquish all that control, and all the mental effort and organization it requires. Sometimes it’s a good idea to let the DJ do it for you. It was good enough in the 90s, right? Back then, 8 year olds didn’t exchange cell numbers, they rode their bikes to each others houses. And who here doesn’t love Super Mario Brothers? The 90s had a lot to offer. There just wasn’t as much to worry about then.

RadioSure is an awesome little app that gives you the old school radio experience you’ve been missing. Put simply, it’s a radio on your computer. I know, we didn’t have computers to play radio stations back then. Well, it’s a bit of a compromise because nowadays, I don’t have an FM receiver to do the job. This is the 21st century folks. RadioSure is tiny, and totally portable on a flash drive. It comes preloaded with over 12,000 stations. It offers a great filtering box to help you narrow things down a bit. Use it to search for key words like ‘old time’ or ‘96kbps’ or AM 560 Chicago’. There’s also a favorites list so you don’t have to dig around for your stations every time. Whatever you’re looking for, you’re likely to find it in a barrel of 12,000 stations. Hey, we only had like 20 in the 90s. The cool thing about it is that once you set it to a station you dig, you just let it run. You’ll get the DJs, you’ll get the commercials, and you’ll get the extraordinary satisfaction of relinquishing control of what meets your ears for awhile. That DJ is gonna play whatever he wants to play, and if you don’t like it, well pick up nice wall mounted, chorded phone and call in a request. He might get to it this week. The app is very easy to use and to figure out so I won’t bother with instructions. You’re a 90s kid, you can think for yourself. One last thing about RadioSure is it’s recording function. Just like that old cassette deck, RadioSure lets you record whatever is crackling through your speakers at the moment. You can make yourself an old fashioned mix tape with this baby, complete with missing bits of the songs, annoying DJs cutting into the intros and commercials! Download RadioSure here and let me know what you think. I hope at least my generation will appreciate what RadioSure can do for our sanity and our sense of nostalgia.

RadioSure in Normal and Compact Modes