08/20/2025
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Palapa Mac Radio
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- Palapa Mac Radio
Your Trop Rock and Coastal Country music mix station. Listen now on the web or download our app!
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Clear Lake Shores, TX
77565
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How it all began...
Palapa (puh-lah-puh)... what the heck is it? Well, some would call it a tiki hut... I called it my refuge... retreat... it was my way of life. So, which brings me into how I acquired this piece of paradise.... Well, as Walt Disney once said, “If you can dream, you can do it.” I had a dream to have a fantastic pool, hot tub and this cool thing that my next door neighbor had... a palapa. From there, everything began to evolve and as they say, “out of necessity some great things are born”.
Of course, with a great backyard setup you have to have great music and if you really know me you know I like music that enhances the environment. My kids will tell you by experience that 9 out of 10 times, when they walk in the house they can guess what’s for dinner, not by smell but by the music being played. It was the same thing for me and Mac’s Palapa Bar- I was looking for a certain sound that would fit the environment I was trying to create... tropical, relaxed, fun, and a welcome inviting vibe... but the sound I was looking for was very diverse and hard to find. The sound had to be a mix of Trop-Rock (think Jimmy Buffett), Kenny Chesney’s island type music, with a sprinkle of Reggae and topped with classic rock. In 2009, I found a handful of internet radio stations that I played but unexpectedly couldn’t find the “right sound”. After several years of trying different things like creating play lists on several CD’s, yes CD’s... those round disks that you put in a stand-alone player... and continually searching online for this unique mix on an internet radio station... left me somewhat unfulfilled. Somewhere around 2011, I landed on a website that had a large array of independent internet radio stations (Live365) that had several tropical stations but were still not the Holy Grail I was searching for. In fact, at this point out of frustration I set out on a pilgrimage of research to find out how I could be one of those “independent internet radio stations”. From out of the desperation... Palapa Mac Radio was born.
The radio station ran purely as a past-time, immensely fun hobby for about 5 years. The station had a great run and had a pretty decent following which pushed us into the top 1,000 out of 5,000+ radio stations on Live365. It was a blast! One of the things that really stood out was the ability to have full control over the song programming, giving the ability to add unknown or independent music artist not normally played on the “Pro” stations. I met some phenomenal people like Trop-Rock artist- Captn Jac (of course Bahama Mama), Greg Dillard, Steve Scott Country, and Adam Kiraly who in turn did some radio tag lines which brought some personality and life to the station.
Well, it was a dark day on January 31, 2016. Live365 turned off the 5,000+ radio stations, including Palapa Mac Radio, because of a turn of events from Congress allowing the expiration of the Webcaster Settlement Act of 2009 which then increased the royalties for all internet based stations and bankrupted the company. So, at midnight Palapa Mac Radio played it’s last song. The hardest part was the station didn’t even have the proper farewell to it’s artists that it served or the dedicated listeners. No one knew it was going to happen... the radio station broadcasters, the artist or listeners... we all just woke up and it was gone. Really not knowing what to do with a limited amount of options and limited amount of resources the station stayed off the air.
