It all began because there was nothing good to listen to on the radio...
Broadcasting from a basement in San Francisco, our high quality MP3 internet broadcasts reach around the world. Rusty Hodge, SomaFM's founder, had been experimenting with online radio since 1995. After helping other companies with their streaming media operations, he decided that no one was going to create the online radio station he wanted to listen to, so he did it himself.
We started planning the station in 1999, and officially launched SomaFM.com in February 2000. Drone Zone was our first station, Groove Salad our second, Secret Agent our third. Over time we would add more channels... we were up to 11 channels when the DMCA CARP ruling came down and forced SomaFM to either pay $500 a day in royalties to the record companies or go off the air. We had no choice but to suspend our streams.
Between June 2002 and November 2002, Rusty learned a lot about politics. By enlisting SomaFM listeners to write and fax congress, in November congress finally came through and passed the Small Webcasters Amendment Act. While the SWAA was not ideal and far from perfect, it would allow SomaFM to go back on the air. Instead of $500 a day we would only have to pay $2000-5000 a year from now on, plus $6000 in back fees. On November 19th, 2002, we returned to the air.
We currently have 9 unique channels back on the air (with 3 more in the works, and ready to go as our resources allow). The station is going strong. We get over 3 million "listener hours" a month, which makes us one of the larger internet-only broadcasters. But we're not looking to increase our audience by playing more mainstream music. We look for music and formats that aren't available on commercial radio, or formats that are "not being done right" as Rusty puts it.
There are plenty of people out there who would really get into the music we play if they just knew about us.
It seems that a lot of people agree, as we have garnered a lot of positive media coverage of SomaFM.
What exactly is SomaFM
We're a listener supported, commercial free internet radio station.
This means no advertising or annoying commercial interruptions. Our mission is to expose great new music to people who otherwise may never encounter it.
Where does the name Soma come from?
It's a play on words. Soma is the name of many things, but in our case is based on the future's perfect pleasure drug and the fact that we started broadcasting from San Francisco's South of Market underground club area, known also as SoMa.
Who is behind SomaFM?
- Rusty Hodge is the founder of SomaFM as well as our General Manager and Program Director. He also is the music director for Groove Salad, Secret Agent, Drone Zone, Space Station Soma, Illinois Street Lounge and contributes to Cliqhop.
He got started in radio during high school by operating a neighborhood micropower station, and later started producing daily programs and making them accessible over a telephone hotline. Rusty got involved with computers when, while managing his college radio station in the early '80s, he developed software on an Apple II for handling station playlists. His professional experience includes work at radio stations in the Los Angeles area (KWOW and KWIZ), developing software for broadcasters, multimedia, and founding Hodge Interactive to put radio and TV stations on the web. It was only natural that eventually he would start his own internet radio station.
Rusty has been collecting records since the mid '70s, bought his first ambient record in the '80s, and latched onto electronic ambient music right away when it started first appearing in the early '90s. Many of the records in his collection are now out of print and extremely hard to find. With the launch of SomaFM in 2000, Rusty's dream of his own station became a reality.
- Elise Nordling, Music Director, Indie Pop Rocks!
Elise Nordling has been the Music Director and DJ for Indie Pop Rocks! on SomaFM since 2001. She came to SomaFM after many varied years of experience in the music industry, from record shop girl to editor/reviewer at the now-defunct Addicted To Noise/SonicNet internet music magazine.
- Shawn Blosser, Music Director, Beat Blender
Shawn Blosser started BeatBlender in the waning days of the dotcom boom of the late 1990's. Coworkers loved the music he played in his office at work and in response to their enthusiasm, Shawn set up an office Shoutcast server so they could enjoy his musical selections around the clock. After a few months of independent operation, BeatBlender became a regular channel on SomaFM. All the music on BeatBlender is handpicked from Shawn's extensive private collection of CDs.
- Tag Loomis, Music Director, Tag's Trance Trip
Tag's love of trance and broadcasting goes back a long way. In the early 1990's, he spent nights and weekends at a local radio station learning the ropes of broadcasting, and taking a few stabs at DJing on the Cable-FM Band. Tag's Trance Trip started broadcasting back in '99. Tag's love of trance was an evolutionary gradient, beginning with mid-80's New Wave to pure Industrial. Sidestepping the Techno scene, and he went straight for Trance. Trance as a genre is hard to define, but for him, its the Deep Progressive and Ethereal sounds that get him moving. Tag's Trance Trip joined SomaFM in October 2004.
In addition to producing internet radio, Tag is most well known for his rewrite of the famous Shoutcast Server. Now residing in Northern Virginia, he spends his non-music time developing Ultravox, Winamp, and Shoutcast software for AOL-TimeWarner, and is the proud father of a one-year-old girl.
- Roy Batchelor, Music Director, Boot Liquor
Roy Batchelor stumbled upon the format that comprises Boot Liquor via a circuitous route. Graduating from High School in the late '70s, radio stations throughout the country labeled his beloved music "classic rock" and conspired to play the same damn 20 songs over and over until he screamed in pain and was forced to find a new musical home. Fortunately, he discovered The Beat Farmers and, while mining all their various influences, realized that "country music" had been given an undeserved bad rap. Boot Liquor is proud to serve up songs about life, death, misery, broken hearts and broken bones.
- Merin McDonell, Graphic Design and Corporate Communications
Merin has been involved in SomaFM from its inception, working on logo design, web design, station logos, photography, marketing materials, press materials, and more. Who knew that hours spent in bars and clubs, listening to music and dancing, would actually turn out to be work experience? Merin's professional experience also includes work for McKinsey & Company, NASA Ames Research Center, and several internet start-ups.
- Meghan Logue, Intern
Meghan has been working in broadcasting (exclusively unpaid gigs) since late 2006. After guest DJing at her college radio station KSFS, she became deeply involved at the station, eventually rising to her current position as KSFS's Operations Manager. She is studying Business at San Francisco State University with a focus in Entrepreneurship and taking Broadcasting classes on the side.
Meghan is SomaFM's first intern. We're extremely happy that she brings so much energy and enthusiasm to the projects she's involved with, including, re-organizing and indexing our CD library and sending out Tshirts, CDs and stickers to our supporters.
What kind of software and equipment do you use?
SomaFM uses Shoutcast servers, Orban audio processors and Orban Opticodec aacPlus encoders. 3GPP servers are Darwin Streaming Servers from Apple Computer. We use a combination of FreeBSD and Linux servers for stream servers and web servers. Our MP3 streams are hosted by AOL, Steadyhost and Darwin server hosting by Streamguys. There are also a few ISPs who graciously donate bandwidth to SomaFM.
So how do you guys stay in business?
We run our station on a very tight budget and rely on donations from listeners, the support of small labels, and from a few companies that provide us with large amounts of bandwidth to broadcast around the world.
What can we expect in the future?
Our goal is to make SomaFM available in as many ways as possible - from internet radio, to cell phones and wireless devices, over the air and HD multicast radio, to satellite broadcasts. Wherever you are or whatever you're doing, we want to make SomaFM available to you.
Through SomaFM's partnership with NPR, we're making our programming available over the air by providing a special version of Groove Salad for NPR member stations to use on their HD multicast channels. (HD Multicast is a new technology that allows FM HD Radio stations to broadcast multiple channels of programming at the same time.)
We also plan to launch more channels and specialty on-demand and podcast programs. Since we have such a small budget, we have to move slowly. But because we don't have to answer to investors or VCs, we can broadcast exactly what we want to.
Thanks for listening, and remember...
SomaFM Loves You!!!!
