I got an HD radio for Christmas

I got an HD radio for Xmas... the Sony XDR-F1HD.  Here are some observations based on some substantial time spent using the radio and listening to HD radio:

1. Not used to a radio taking 5-7 seconds to "boot" when you turn it on.
2. HD2/HD3 channels take 5+ seconds to "Link" whenever you change channels. Doesn't really encourage channel surfing.
3. The radio runs very hot; I've heard those Ibiquity chips suck power and that's why you're not seeing a walkman HD radio yet. (And that's also why you'll probably never see HD radio in a cell phone.)
4. In Bernal Heights (where I live), I can only pick up 15 HD2 channels.
5. Public radio, such as KQED, KCSM, KALW all have no HD2
6. I'm not really impressed with any of the current HD2 formats here in San Francisco. There is a lot of hiphop, but don't you think most of the audience for that's going to just be downloading MP3 "mixtapes" to their iPods?
7. I'm not impressed with the HD2 audio quality; and when more stations add a HD3 that means the main channel will sound the same as the HD2/3 channels - 32kb streams. They sound good for 32kb but there are some strange artifacts that crop up from time to time.

Bottom line: the user experience for me is the worse issue, largely the time it takes to switch channels.  The whole tuning scheme is pretty wacky too, you can't just tune across the HD2 channels directly.

If you're only listening to the main channel programs, it's probably a good feature. And for stations like KQED which have terrible coverage (dropouts and multipath) in most of SF, I suspect it's a good solution in the car.  But for home use, what's the point. Cable and Satellite TV both have a broader choice of music channels that come with most programming packages.

Not to mention that if you're at home, you have far more choices from Internet Radio!

Listener email: Why do we expand our channels?

An anonymous listener from Germany writes:

i really enjoy the music you play at your station. Drone Zone, Groove Salad, Space Station, Cliphop and Doomed is the best mix for people FAR AWAY FROM MAINSTREAM. i think that was your original idea to launch this project, and i think many people will thank you for that great idea. BUT if you're not able to meet your budget why do you expand your channels? Is "getting bigger and bigger" the goal of a "underground station"? Does any one of the listeners from the beginning need christmas music? Please think about it and go back to the roots.

First, to set the record straight, Xmas in Frisko has been around longer than Doomed or Space Station Soma. I think it's unlike any other holiday broadcast out there, and very fitting for SomaFM. Christmas Lounge was an offshoot of holiday programming we did on Groove Salad - many people asked that we not play any holiday music on Groove Salad and instead start a dedicated channel for it, so we did.

Our mission has been to provide music programming that's "outside the mainstream"; music that you won't hear on FM radio. That doesn't mean every song we play hast to be unknown, it just means we're trying to play songs that you are far less likely to hear anywhere else. So yes, there are a few Christmas songs on Christmas Lounge that are by artists many people have heard of... but they're the songs that fit the theme, and they're less than 10% of what's played on that channel.

While it is true that SomaFM is slowly expanding, we're not expanding nearly as fast as the total online audience for internet radio is. Below a certain size, we'd be lost in the noise and gradually our audience would disappear. In fact, our listener growth in the last 12 months has been only a few percent. I'm sure a lot of the reason for that is there are no so many different options for listening to music online, and as people have more choices, they spend less time focusing on a single source for their music.

That's why we expand. And we expand into formats that are related to our existing formats. Illinois Street Lounge grew out of Secret Agent - bachelor pad music and easy listening but without the "spy" vibe. Digitalis grew out of Cliqhop and Indie Pop Rocks; Lush is a vocal-alternative to Groove Salad which most listeners prefer we keep instrumental.

When I audition music (and this is true for all the other music directors), we find a lot of good music that doesn't fit our normal channels. We start building up playlists for these new styles, and after a while, we sometimes find that we're getting tons of music that's really good but doesn't fit into an existing channel. That's when we launch a new channel.

The best thing about these new channels is that it gives our supporters a chance to hear something different yet still stay loyal to SomaFM. My goal is to be able to provide a variety of different styles of really good, hand-chosen music for our listeners no matter what kind of a mood you are in.

Hopefully that answered your question!

SoundExchange Royalty Update

A lot of people have asked if we've gotten everything settled with SoundExchange yet. Unfortunately, the answer is no. Basically, SoundExchange is in negotiations with some of the larger webcasters represented by DiMA. Once those negotiations have concluded, SoundExchange will then be negotiations with the small webcasters. I'm expecting that it won't be until Feb 2009 when the agreement is finalized.

Holiday Channel Traffic!

The large number of listeners to our holiday channels has boosted our "listener hours" to about 6.7 million in December. We're pushing over 600mbit/sec of bandwidth just on the holiday channels. Who knew holiday music would be so popular... and we're not even the most popular holiday music station out there!