I've been donating to SomaFM for many years, and it is my music provider of choice in my home office (Space Station Soma for me). Some years ago I had an afternoon to kill while visiting San Francisco and Rusty was kind enough to let me stop by and say hello. A quick 10 minute visit turned into one of the most interesting two hours I've spent in my entire life. Rusty gave me the whole tour of the software interface that runs SomaFM and we had a fascinating discussion about the history of SomaFM in particular and streaming music in general. Thanks again Rusty!
It's been several years but I also had the pleasure of meeting Rusty down at the studio once. My dad has now made it a habit; he's been to SF for work and pleasure four or five times now, and met up with him each time, I believe.
I have been listening to Soma for at least 15 years. Definitely a great place to have bookmarked.
I've been listening since 2004. Every 4 or 5 years I'll realize how much it's been a part of my life through thick and thin, and write him a gushing email. He always has the grace to reply.
SomeFM is such a rarity these days, a reminder of how we believed the Internet was going to be.
They take recurring donations. Probably the best way to help them and one of the best investments for me, as keeping it up and running is a way to keep these naive ideas alive.
The music is curated and is most excellent (for my taste, of course). I have Groove Salad on speed dial in my HomePods around the house (through TuneIn radio).
> SomeFM is such a rarity these days, a reminder of how we believed the Internet was going to be.
Let me start out by saying that SomaFM is great.
But when I started listening to SomaFM (nearly 20 years ago), I never imagined that for only $10/month I'd be able to listen to (essentially) any song whenever I wanted. That's amazing and so much more valuable (to me) than what Soma offers.
To each their own, I guess. I also pay for Apple Music and have access to all that music, but there is no substitute for curation with a sense of taste and musical direction.
For me, having access to all the music in the world is only marginally better than what I had before when buying CDs (or records even); I don't listen to more music than before. What I really love, instead, is being introduced to a new track that captures my interest, a track that I know I will be listening to multiple times in the future. The quality, and the fact that I would have probably not have found it by myself, or not liked it without the context.
When I was younger, when I had enough pocket money, I would go to the record store, and the problem wasn't how to get a CD, because they had oh so many!, but what CD to get. For this, I relied on friends, radio stations, and the shop keepers. They all had a good portion of the music world in their head, with their own taste and opinion about what's interesting, and I found many gems this way. Automated recommendations don't quite do it for me, nor I have been lucky with other people's playlists; I gotta get acquainted with the curator first in order to trust their curation.
So I listen to SomaFM, and when something gets me interested I go and buy it or add it to my library. Best of both worlds!
> I'd be able to listen to (essentially) any song whenever I wanted.
For a while now I've considered this to be more of a curse than anything else because at least personally I've noticed that the constant hopping replaces genuinely paying attention with quantity. I now pick a handful of albums per month or pick an NTS session I like and re-listen much more.
Oh my mother loves SomaFM. The thing is that you can just switch it on an it is good, and it will be in 5 years time as well without you having to do anything at all.
I really miss Shoutcast/Icecast being such an active part of my life. The quality is way down, and there's like 1/6th the channels there used to be. For electronica in particular, there was just so much. But there were also so many random niche stations!
SomaFM continues to be a great place for highly genre-d music. I make sure to give em money semi-regularly. Suburbs of Goa[1] is one of my favorite.
There are still quite a few though. I have several bookmarks on my normal PC and in AIMP on mobile. I never did "outgrow" my practice of using multiple bookmarked streaming stations as my daily "radio dial".
There may not be as much Icecast stuff but internet radio is doing very well.
Someone else has already mentioned nts.live (it has a huge range of stuff, more like a radio station) but other UK-based stations are balamii.com, supremefm.com and rinse.fm (Rinse used to be a pirate radio station but went legal).
Internet radio stations are the go to for up to date music really.
Radio Paradise [1] is also going strong after 20+ years. Fantastic curation and you can even stream in lossless for free (or at least I seem to be able to from the Android TV app).
One of the best things about it is how the main mix transcends genres. I consider it basically a rock station, but they'll also play Country, Jazz, Blues, Pop, Classical and miscellaneous other stuff. In a single song set you can easily go from Led Zeppelin to Radiohead to Johnny Cash to Arctic Monkeys to Stevie Wonder to Billie Eilish to JS Brahms to some West African singer you'd never had heard of otherwise. It's great for musical discovery.
I've been "harvesting" their playlist (via their published RSS feed) for ~5 years now, storing an entry for each played song in a MySQL db table. I'm not doing anything with this data right now, but at some point in the future when Bill & Rebecca retire, I take comfort in knowing I'll be able to munge together a lot of RP-quality playlists. :)
Any possibility of sharing that on GitHub or similar? I and I’m sure others would be interested! And if you decide to do so, thank you for your hard work!
What I like about RadioParadise is that I don't have to pigeon-hole the music I listen to. Sometimes you do want a particular genre, and other times I'm happy to be led by an expert curator. RadioParadise is superb for the latter.
So it says it’s a “lossless” stream but I don’t think it really is because my Yamaha receiver “Enhancer” (compressed music enhancer mode) mode still shows active. For truly lossless streams like Amazon Music’s HD/Ultra HD, my “Enhancer” indication disappears/does not show, because it’s receiving a lossless stream (at least 16/44.1)
Love SomaFM, have their 15 year anniversary channel list poster up in my office.
Been listening since the days of the original 3 channels (Groove Salad / Drone Zone / Secret Agent). I loved so much when cliqhop came out and streamed more abstract electronic music, especially since "electronic music" in streaming was always so heavily either ambient (cool) or club/dance music (ehh).
But I really want to highlight Metal Detector, the metal channel they started a few years ago. I've always found metal streaming stations underwhelming. MD is the first one I've heard that effortlessly cuts broadly across the various subgenres and eras, and doesn't fall into the traps of just playing the arena-filling stuff, or getting locked into one specific niche.
SomaFM is an amazing institution. I was introduced to it mid/early 2000's by travelling tech nomad from Germany that passed by Bucharest; I spread it to my family (dad keeps a recurring donation going and we have a family heirloom soma fm t-shirt). Fast forward to now, my 2mo old seems to enjoy Space Station Soma, and, if I'm lucky, falls asleep on Deep Space One.
I hope future generations will get to enjoy it. As others said (tbatchelli), "it's an example of how we believed the Internet is going to be".
I have a 2009 Mini connected to a Creative Labs 2.1 and it does.
But then, there's a Lenovo Yoga from like 2016 that plugs into a pair of SOLO7c and that doesn't.
Different stations I start with volume 55-85, they don't all have the same loudness (genre related, no doubt). But the use for radio is for me "fill space, drown out distractions, provide flow" so that I don't need it loud. I'm not actively listening to radio. I didn't choose the song. And that's the point.
Oh man! I haven't listened to SomaFM since like 2007. So glad they're still around, can't wait to dive back into my old favorite channels, like "Drone Zone" and "Secret Agent". Gonna start a recurring donation as well.
Readit News
I have been listening to Soma for at least 15 years. Definitely a great place to have bookmarked.
Would absolutely love to meet him some day
They take recurring donations. Probably the best way to help them and one of the best investments for me, as keeping it up and running is a way to keep these naive ideas alive.
The music is curated and is most excellent (for my taste, of course). I have Groove Salad on speed dial in my HomePods around the house (through TuneIn radio).
Thank you Rusty for sticking with it!
Let me start out by saying that SomaFM is great.
But when I started listening to SomaFM (nearly 20 years ago), I never imagined that for only $10/month I'd be able to listen to (essentially) any song whenever I wanted. That's amazing and so much more valuable (to me) than what Soma offers.
For me, having access to all the music in the world is only marginally better than what I had before when buying CDs (or records even); I don't listen to more music than before. What I really love, instead, is being introduced to a new track that captures my interest, a track that I know I will be listening to multiple times in the future. The quality, and the fact that I would have probably not have found it by myself, or not liked it without the context.
When I was younger, when I had enough pocket money, I would go to the record store, and the problem wasn't how to get a CD, because they had oh so many!, but what CD to get. For this, I relied on friends, radio stations, and the shop keepers. They all had a good portion of the music world in their head, with their own taste and opinion about what's interesting, and I found many gems this way. Automated recommendations don't quite do it for me, nor I have been lucky with other people's playlists; I gotta get acquainted with the curator first in order to trust their curation.
So I listen to SomaFM, and when something gets me interested I go and buy it or add it to my library. Best of both worlds!
That’s why SomaFM and online stations like KCRW are so valuable. They’re ways to introduce new music and even new styles of music to the listeners.
For a while now I've considered this to be more of a curse than anything else because at least personally I've noticed that the constant hopping replaces genuinely paying attention with quantity. I now pick a handful of albums per month or pick an NTS session I like and re-listen much more.
very well said
SomaFM continues to be a great place for highly genre-d music. I make sure to give em money semi-regularly. Suburbs of Goa[1] is one of my favorite.
[1] https://somafm.com/suburbsofgoa/
Someone else has already mentioned nts.live (it has a huge range of stuff, more like a radio station) but other UK-based stations are balamii.com, supremefm.com and rinse.fm (Rinse used to be a pirate radio station but went legal).
Internet radio stations are the go to for up to date music really.
Indeed. I remember regularly switching between Massinova and a rebroadcast Polish classical station whose DJ had a nice voice.
[1] https://radioparadise.com/
One of the best things about it is how the main mix transcends genres. I consider it basically a rock station, but they'll also play Country, Jazz, Blues, Pop, Classical and miscellaneous other stuff. In a single song set you can easily go from Led Zeppelin to Radiohead to Johnny Cash to Arctic Monkeys to Stevie Wonder to Billie Eilish to JS Brahms to some West African singer you'd never had heard of otherwise. It's great for musical discovery.
I've been "harvesting" their playlist (via their published RSS feed) for ~5 years now, storing an entry for each played song in a MySQL db table. I'm not doing anything with this data right now, but at some point in the future when Bill & Rebecca retire, I take comfort in knowing I'll be able to munge together a lot of RP-quality playlists. :)
Been listening since the days of the original 3 channels (Groove Salad / Drone Zone / Secret Agent). I loved so much when cliqhop came out and streamed more abstract electronic music, especially since "electronic music" in streaming was always so heavily either ambient (cool) or club/dance music (ehh).
But I really want to highlight Metal Detector, the metal channel they started a few years ago. I've always found metal streaming stations underwhelming. MD is the first one I've heard that effortlessly cuts broadly across the various subgenres and eras, and doesn't fall into the traps of just playing the arena-filling stuff, or getting locked into one specific niche.
I hope future generations will get to enjoy it. As others said (tbatchelli), "it's an example of how we believed the Internet is going to be".
Thanks!
Doesn't `volume 128` saturate sound though ?
But then, there's a Lenovo Yoga from like 2016 that plugs into a pair of SOLO7c and that doesn't.
Different stations I start with volume 55-85, they don't all have the same loudness (genre related, no doubt). But the use for radio is for me "fill space, drown out distractions, provide flow" so that I don't need it loud. I'm not actively listening to radio. I didn't choose the song. And that's the point.