In Radish We Trust: Robert Radish’s Yahoo! Music Playlist Portal

True playlist afficionados are already familiar with Robert Burke’s insane Rhapsody and MusicMatch Radish playlist sites. Clearly the work of a music-loving madman, they feature hundreds of playlists covering eras, moods, producers, labels, holidays, situations, and more. Being a firm believer in the axiom “anything worth doing is worth overdoing”, I got in touch with Robert as soon as Steve Clark brought his site to my attention a few months back.

I let Robert know we were about to release a shared playlist feature of our own with the latest version of the Yahoo! Music Engine, and asked if he’d be interested in a preview. Thankfully he was and he started making playlists and finding the outer limits of our platform pretty much immediately.

So now it’s with great pride and pleasure that I invite you to check out Robert’s Yahoo! Music Unlimited-based playlist portal, Playlist Radish, featuring tens of playlists and growing daily. Subscribe to the RSS feed via My Yahoo! or better yet set it up as a Yahoo! Alert (visit Yahoo! Alerts, choose Feed/Blog, paste http://feeds.feedburner.com/YahooRadish into the box, and hit save) to get new playlists delivered to your mailbox or via Messenger daily.

A few of my recent favorites from The Mighty Radish (a list of lists — way meta, dawg):

• J. Dilla aka Jay Dee - This week’s news on the death of young Jay Dee from complications due to lupus was terribly sad. Experience his too-brief legacy with this spectacular playlist.
• Best Album Covers of 2005 - A great way of slicing the releases of 2005, reminding us that cover art does still matter (and when we get our standard for digital packaging, XIPF, going, it’ll matter even more).
• Produced by Rick Rubin - Beastie Boys, Slayer, Johnny Cash, Public Enemy, Red Hot Chili Peppers, System of a Down, Jay-Z, Danzig, and most recently Neil Diamond? Ladies and gentlemen, the career of the great Rick Rubin (often referred to as “the world’s fattest vegan” by Buddyhead).
• The Songs of Dan Penn - Dan Penn might look like your average southerner but he’s an incredibly prolific songwriter and a great singer in his own right. Check out this playlist and also his excellent new live record with Spooner Oldham.
• Songs Accused of Satanic Backmasking - The devil made me include this playlist.
• Bill Gates has a posse - Rap songs mentioning Gates. Oh yeah, Robert gets pretty random.
• Spectacular Sadcore - Musical downers featuring the kings and queens of sadcore: Red House Painters, Arab Strap, Mazzy Star, and more.
• Celebrity Playlist: Lucinda Williams - As if you needed any more reasons to think Lucinda is rad, check out her playlist.
• Coltrane on the Side - Coltrane plays well with others.
• Paranoia - Songs with a Paranoid bent, featuring my favorite from a most underrated Kinks album.
• AC/DC Covers - Hayseed Dixie and Mark Kozelek have very different approaches to the same material. Both worth hearing.

Thanks very much to Robert for seeding our playlist community with such excellent playlists. Come to L.A.. Dinner’s on me.

Robert asked me to put the word out that he’s looking for other great playlisters to post playlists to his site. Contact Robert if you think you have the skills.

ian c rogers
Yahoo! Music