Radio is history now. The recordings are still alive.

Radio became a historical medium while its recordings kept working. Programs, breaks, interviews, and stray moments of talk still play back exactly as they were broadcast, and they still carry the sound of the time that made them.

Broadcast recordings hold cultural evidence far beyond music. What was advertised, what was argued about, how people spoke on the air and to each other, what a station chose to say between records—all of it survives in the same tape.

Large archives do the preservation. Old Radio does something narrower: it supplies crafted, audience-specific ways into selected collections, so material that is technically public also becomes genuinely listenable.

Each radio stays distinct. Nothing is collapsed into one universal feed, because a Golden Age drama serial, a rock broadcast, and a station aircheck do not reward the same interface.

Source attribution and routes back to the original record are foundational, not a footnote. The holding archive remains the source of record in every case.

A documentary counterpart

Some broadcasts belong to more than one history. At 2200studios.us, the documentary record of Record Plant Sausalito, KSAN and KFOG material is documented through articles, source work, and the record of Record Plant Sausalito. Old Radio is the listening counterpart: it gives those broadcasts a focused interface for hearing and discovery. The two sites are built to stay connected, keeping the documentary record and the listening experience in their own roles rather than duplicating each other.