Where Radio Meets Web 2.0
By Carl Munson
Just about everyone knows what radio is: music and talk coming through the ether and out of your speakers or headphones. And if you're lucky, you'll like the choices broadcasters have made on your behalf in terms of taste, content and variety.
Web 2.0 however is a lesser-known quantity, but think of it as the new Internet age where uploading is equally, if not more important, than downloading, and where collaboration, sharing and creativity are prioritised over consumption, control and mediocrity.
Put them together and you get a new kind of airwave - a new era for ears where you can hear what you want when you want to hear it. Podcasting, MP3s, audio-on-demand and Internet radio are all symptoms of this new condition where sound has never been sounder, choice never wider and power never more in the hands of everyday people.
Add to this a more conscious take on life and living, and you end up with Traydio - air to share - where MP3 means Mpfree - the new home of enlightening, inspiring and uplifting audio.
Traydio began life - in the Summer of 2007 - as an Internet radio station, first as BeRadio, then Wonderful Radio. But something occurred to the founding team who questioned the validity and usefulness of taking an old idea (radio) direct to a new method of transmission (the Internet).
Taking all that's outdated about radio (lack of real choice, time-bound transmission and heavy editorial control) to the new frontier of Web 2.0 suddenly looked like using a bicycle to travel on the moon. Cycling can be fun and the moon is an amazing landscape, but the combination is a recipe for disappointment and under-achievement.
But what about the "conscious take on life and living"? How does that work? Public service broadcasting is a concept as old as the media itself, but what does it mean in a world of increasing uncertainty, rapid change, globalisation and environmental concern? On traydio, it means asking, and endeavouring to answer, the big questions of our times. It means increasing awareness, and offering choices that help rather than harm. It means thinking about the impact of our decisions and the way we live our lives.
In this spirit, it's so far been attracted to the work of poets, sages, health and lifestyle experts, social experimenters, visionaries, charities, eccentrics and change agents - the usual suspects of what many are calling the "conscious living" movement. But it's not just about who and what you are; it's about who and what you are being - or would like to be - and how your thoughts and actions can make a positive contribution to the people and places in your life.
So come on in. Listen to, download and upload alongside the performers, musicians, podcasters, comedians and everyday people of every kind - young and old - who are sharing their air on traydio.com.