If you’ve never heard of Radio Paradise, then it’s high time you checked them out. It’s radio the way it ought to be: Really good music, zero commercials. They play everything from electronica to jazz and manage to blend it together in a way that leaves you wondering why radically different genres aren’t played back to back more often. Over the past six or so years, this one radio station has become my primary source of discovering new music.

Now, if you’re already a fan of RP and have ever found yourself yearning for a dedicated desktop app, then I have a little present for you. (As long as you’re a Windows user. Mac and Linux people are out of luck. Sawwy!) Introducing the Radio Paradise Desktop App! But why? There’s already a handy-dandy web app, so what do we need a desktop version for? Glad you asked…

One of the first things I do every morning is start up Radio Paradise’s web app. I listen to it throughout the day. But every time they play something that perks my ears (not an uncommon occurrence!) I have to fumble through all my open windows looking for that app before I can see what’s playing. Then it occurred me: it would be super convenient to have a shortcut on my taskbar, so I could just press a keyboard shortcut and go directly to RP. But once I started creating something to do exactly that, all kinds of other neat ideas popped in my mind. After I finished I figured other Radio Paradise fans might like it, so I decided to release it to the world. And here it is!

If you’re using Windows 7, you can pin the app to your taskbar and use the built-in Windows keyboard shortcuts to open and close RP. Ever suddenly find yourself wondering what song is currently playing? Now it’s just a keystroke away! If you’re on Vista or XP, you can still add a shortcut to the app to your start menu, quick access toolbar, or desktop.

When the app is running, it will display a pop-up notification for 10 seconds whenever the current song playing changes. Clicking the link in the notification window will take you to the song’s information page on radioparadise.com. Clicking anywhere else on the notification will cause it to go away before the 10 seconds is up. You have the option of displaying notifications with cover art, without art, or you can disable notifications altogether.

Pressing Ctrl + M while the app is active will toggle mute. The icon displayed in the taskbar will change to indicate that RP is muted. (There is a known issue with this, however. Pinned taskbar icons will not change when RP is muted. I’m hoping to fix this in a later version.)

When the app is active, pressing Esc will close RP and F1 will display help and settings information. More options will be added in upcoming versions, including global hotkeys.

Just download and run the exe file, and you’re good to go!

This app is and always will be complete free. But if you like using it, consider a donation to Radio Paradise.

This app requires Windows XP or higher, .NET 3.5 SP1 or higher, and Internet Explorer 7 or higher. More information can be found on the release notes page.