Radio Odyssey was not born in 2025. Long before it became the positive, breathing-friendly web radio you can hear today, it existed on FM, in the Pas-de-Calais region of northern France, more than 30 years earlier. Here is that story, as told by its programme director.
1994: two enthusiasts meet
The Radio Odyssey association was founded on 12 August 1994 by two radio enthusiasts — one drawn to the high-frequency engineering side, the other to broadcasting itself. Each had been experimenting separately with transmitters and shows when chance brought them together, and Radio Odyssey came out of that meeting. A few months later, the association was even granted a temporary FM frequency, for a local commercial fortnight.
Where the name comes from
It was inspired by the American band Odyssey and their track "Going Back to My Roots", in the 80s.
The early technical days: from Winamp to Raduga
In the 90s, computers were only just arriving in radio. Radio Odyssey was already using Winamp to play mp3 files — genuinely radical at a time when stations were still cueing up CDs. For scheduling, the association relied on Raduga, which made it possible to run a professional music station with ad breaks inserted automatically — very useful during the temporary FM period. Nobody ever measured the audience of those years: that was never the point.
A long dormancy, then an unexpected return
The two founders' professional careers eventually took over from the association, and Radio Odyssey went quiet for more than 25 years. It came back — online only — on 19 January 2025. That return was no accident.
The meeting that actually caused the relaunch
The 2025 return grew out of a much earlier meeting with Elisabeth Bélot-Grimaud, a doctor of cognitive psychology, and a conversation about wellbeing and heart coherence breathing. One of them had the tools and the radio knowledge; the other had the expertise on subjects that were becoming more and more prominent. "What if we teamed up and made a radio station with heart coherence breathing in it?" On 19 January 2025, Radio Odyssey became a web radio — carrying, from day one, the same positive programming it already had in the 90s, long before that stance became a trend.
What changed, and what didn't
More than 25 years separate the two eras of Radio Odyssey. A great deal changed — and yet, not so much:
- The signal no longer travels 20 km on FM: it is hosted on a streaming platform and can be heard anywhere in the world with an internet connection
- The mixing desk, the CD decks and the dedicated computer have given way to an entirely file-based chain
- mp3 is still here, but digital compression quality has improved enormously since the 90s
- The software changed, but the underlying principle — a music schedule that is thought through, not left to chance — has not
One thing we're proud of
In a little over eighteen months since the relaunch, Radio Odyssey has built a website, a proper app, and a base of regular listeners. But the real pride lies elsewhere: putting a heart coherence breathing sequence on air at the top of every hour, all day long, inside a bright and positive music schedule — and claiming it openly as the station's signature. As far as we know, that combination is unique in France, and quite possibly beyond. Radio Odyssey is now carried by the main international web radio platforms.