More than an online radio (and video) station, it's a kind of time travel. Precisely, towards the Eighties and early Nineties. When an afternoon by the pool was enough to be happy, among bizarre colors swimwear, shoulder pads galore, hairspray rivers, a Madonna or Culture Club record, without the ubiquitous smartphone pushing everyone towards the dictatorship of optimism. At the time, you could cut optimism with a knife jumping from crowded beach parties, floral shirts and the fitness and aerobics boom.
It's called Poolside.fm and it was born a few years ago. But during the international lockdowns due to the coronavirus pandemy it saw a terrific traffic growth. To the point of persuade the easy-going team that launched the company in 2014, led by the Scottish Marty Bell, to think of a new consumer project, still secret. Poolside.fm is basically a site, with graphics and interactions reminiscent of the look of Windows 3.1 and of something that came out later on Windows 95, through which to listen to playlists, chat with other users, buy themed merchandising and see looped videos from films, adv and TV programs of that time. Guaranteed: it is addictive. An experience fueled with zero funds, zero staff and zero marketing, only through the word of mouth of the alternative internet, which may seem a little frivolous. Instead, it is the Indian reserve of authentic and more genuine internet inspiration. We talked about it with its founder, Marty Bell.
What is poolside, in simple words?
Poolside FM is a super-summer music website. We add layers of summer feelings and nostalgia with ‘80s VHS visuals and a retro computer OS interface.
When did you have the idea?
I had the idea back in 2014 when I decided it could be a great idea to join two things that make me very happy: upbeat, summer music and ridiculous scenes from ‘80s beach movies.
The 80s and 90s, a fake vintage desktop with videos and songs from that decades, a chat: what is the goal? Give us a kind of digital daydream?
It’s a virtual vacation! An escape from the real world. To transport you to a place of warmth & happiness by the pool.
What kind of imagery did you want to recreate and why exactly that kind?
Anything that feels like a moment from a golden, perfect summer from the past – before mobile phones were around, before everyone did everything for Instagram. I think it makes people feel good to reminisce about simpler times, when things feel the opposite of simple in 2020.
Did quarantine and lockdown contribute to the success of the past few months?
Yes! We’ve definitely had a big rise in traffic with people working from home and looking for an escape from a lot of the dark things that are happening in the world right now. We see a bunch of tweets.
Who is behind Poolside? Is it a profitable business? Which are the numbers (views, visitors, etc)?
Myself, our incredible designer Niek Dekker, the fastest web developer on earth Lewis King, and some more awesome developers working on different pieces of the poolside puzzle - Josh McMillan (upcoming mobile app), Nick Haddad (backend tech) and Will Chilcutt (upcoming Mac app). Poolside FM is not a profitable business right now - just a fun side project with a lot of hype around it. We make enough money to cover our running costs. But we’re currently raising investment to launch a top secret consumer product which we’re very excited about, so we do plan to make money soon. In the last 12 months we’ve had over 700,000 individual listeners contributing to around 1.3 million individual listening sessions. Our top countries are USA, Japan, UK, Germany and Canada. Our top cities are London, New York, Yokohama, Paris and LA.
How should we use Poolside?
Play it in the background while you’re working, play it through a speaker when you have friends over for dinner, play it on a waterproof speaker in the pool (of course!) and definitely cast it huge on a wall via a projector when you’re throwing a party!