Today we launch RantSocial Radio, the first of a planned series of stations to offer continuous, curated media selected from the project’s collection.
Right now, its content is simple: 12 hours of 154 hand-picked, Creative Commons-licensed tracks. Most of them are already available in the public collection, and the remainder will be added in the next couple weeks. In the meantime, nearly all of them can also be found with a quick search on the Internet Archive.
Questions, comments, requests, contributions, and any other feedback are always welcome.
In the early summer of 2003, I was skimming Winamp’s shiny new video stream directory and came across RantTV, playing the Burning Man episodes of SKTFM.TV.
That idle click 18 years ago changed the course of my life more than I can say - irreversibly tying me to music, aesthetics, design values, and a community of fellow weirdos. My closest and longest-lasting friendships have been built on this common ground.
In the last decade, that community and the media it was built around has frayed at the seams, with parts lost to the churn of expiring servers and the trends of social media. Those values have been assailed more and more by corpolitical interests that constantly demonstrate their unsuitability as caretakers of our shared history.
We need better, and we can do better.
In 2019 (two years ago today) when the RantRadio and RantTV streams were shut down, it marked the end of what had been a stable presence my entire adult life. I bought the domain and wrote out a plan for this project the next day. With permission to proceed (and even slightly bend the “don’t call it Rant” rule), I’m excited to finally take it public.
Today, this is an ongoing archive of the free media that brought us together, and more that matches our tastes and interests. Soon, it will hopefully develop into much more.
If you want to help, save a copy of the collection for yourself and stay in touch. If you have something to say or show and the means to record it, consider making something new to add to our collection.