It’s funny how things come together sometimes. I’ve been following the chat lately about Yahoo’s purchase of Webjay, which is kind the del.icio.us of music playlists, but I wasn’t paying that much attention because I’d never heard of Webjay.com until that point (hey, I can’t know about everything — I have a day job). And then I came across a mention of this great podcast/radio show thing by Zoe, a 15-year-old girl from Santa Monica.
Maybe it was the name that caught my eye — my youngest daughter’s name happens to be Zoe. Anyway, I went and checked it out, and it led to me to Webjay, which is where Zoe’s shows are archived so you can stream and/or download them. I listened to a couple and thought they were great — a fantastic mix of stuff by bands like Fallout Boy, Weezer and The Strokes, as well as people I’d never heard of like Brendan Benson and One Block Radius. A really great selection.
According to a note from Zoe’s father, his daughter made him some mix tapes, and they found their way to a friend who had a pirate radio show, and then SPIN magazine heard about it (although the link to the story he mentions doesn’t go anywhere) and then it kind of took off. Great story — and Webjay turns out to be a great service. Another smart buy by Yahoo, making it a trifecta with del.icio.us and Flickr.com.
Update:
I did a little digging, and it’s probably not a surprise that Zoe’s into music — it appears her dad is Ian Rogers, who used to work with the Beastie Boys (where he was one of the first to post the band’s Mp3 files online in 1998), then wound up at Nullsoft (creators of Winamp before AOL bought it) and then at a company called Mediacode, which was bought by Yahoo and became the guts of Yahoo’s Music Engine.