Running the survival numbers

I'm running some numbers, to try to figure out potential ways to keep SomaFM on the air if the current royalties don't get overturned.

We could cover our costs if we sell 6 commercials a minute for $5 CPM (the cost per thousand current listeners). For audio ads on net radio, this is kind of expensive, typically ads are going for $1.50-2.00 CPM. At $2 CPMs, we're talking 15 ads an hour.

The subscription service numbers are equaly crazy. If we assume that someone listens 24x7, our cost is $22 a month. Of course, if they only listen on average 2 hours a day, it's only $1.84 a month.

4 hour a day average listen time: $3.68
6 hour a day average listen time: $5.53
8 hour a day average listen time: $7.37
10 hour a day average listen time: $9.21

And those rates are just to cover our costs and don't include money for growing SomaFM.

It also assumes we can actually sell all the ads we need to... which is a big assumption. One of the issues in net radio ad sales today is that there is more "inventory" (slots to put ads in) than there are ads to go around.