About that preroll

A couple people wrote in complaining on how we added a "preroll" support SomaFM message to our streams.

That was a mistake; The preroll was only supposed to show up when people were listening via third-party sites which embed our streams on their sites (next to our ads). Unfortunately, I made a mistake in a config file and left off one line... and that caused everyone listening with Windows Media to get the message...

Here's an example of what we were trying to affect. That's one of many sites that embed our streams in their pages, as if they were the source of our content, and then sell ads around our stream!

I tried to make it so that when they connected to our stream, they got the donation pre-roll first. After all we are paying for all the bandwidth and royalties and they're selling ads on our content!!! But rather than just block it, we thought we could make more people aware that we're supported by our listeners.

But I made a type in a config file. Left in an extra "#". And so all Windows Media listeners were getting the preroll. Not just the leachers.

So its fixed now.

If we ever do something like that in the future; it will be done where you only hear the leader/preroll ONCE a day at most, not repeated every time you change channels. But even that would be reserved for something special, we wouldn't do that on a regular basis.

Nine years ago....

Nine years ago, "Soma FM" appeared in the Shoutcast.com listings; it's when we turned on our first server (with thanks to Sam Habash who setup our first server at Best.com).

Here's how I described our first channel: ``a mix of ambient groove and electronica with obscure 70s music and the occasional drop in``.

Within a year, we'd have 3 channels: Groove Salad, Drone Zone and Secret Agent.

We didn't register SomaFM.com until Feb of 2000, and the website - more like a "web page" - appeared around March of 2000.

Happy New Year

Thanks to everyone for making 2007 an incredible year for SomaFM. While we had lots of challenges (hi CRB!), we also had incredible support from our community of listeners. We have some exciting new stuff in store for 2008. And the CRB battle isn't over yet, although at this point, it seems more like continued peace negotiations and nothing like a war.

Lots of broken parts of the internet today!

Blogger is broken right now; it can't upload to our server. They've at least acknowledged the problem, but who knows when this post will appear.

Paypal, on the other hand, is having some problems that they're not acknowledging - their history download is very broken right now. We use this to populate a Filemaker database we use for sending out the Tshirts and Cds. Not only is it taking a really, really long time (20+ hours to process) when it usually takes 10-15 minutes, but the last download we got was missing all sorts of data. The problem seems to have started yesterday morning; it affected all our shirt orders since 2-Nov.

The data isn't lost, but if we have to go in through the web interface and copy everything into the Filemaker database that will be a real pain.

Yeh, yeh, yeh I know we should be using Instant Payment Notification and not the batch download history - but apparently the Paypal IPN was even broken in the last few days. Paypal has a blog about system status, but it seems to not cover everything.

Earthquake in SF

The strongest earthquake in the last 10+ years has hit the San Francisco area. Merin was at OQO (her "day" job) in the Mission and it was really shaking there. Elise was at the store, and she said stuff was swinging and falling off the shelves. I have nothing to report as I'm in NYC (for some meetings with SoundExchange which I'll report on later).

For now, it seems there was no serious damage, but a lot of rattled nerves.

Blue Lagoon "Hangover Party"

An annual tradition of the Iceland Airwaves music festival is the Saturday "Hangover" party at the Blue Lagoon.

The Blue Lagoon is a huge thermal pool that is a by-product of the adjacent geothermal plant. Seawater is pumped into the ground and super-heated, which then turns turbines and generates electricity. The waste product is hot water full of minerals, silica and algae. The silica is what gives the water its blue look, and the bottom of the lagoon is full of silica mud which feels really nice on your skin.

For the hangover party, a sound system is setup and DJs spin as the audience soaks. This year, Flockids and DJ Detect from France provided the entertainment. The music was fun, upbeat techno which had everyone bobbing in the pools.

You can see the geothermal plant in the background, with all the steam coming of it. I overheard someone saying, "this place is so great. Too bad they built that power plant right next to it!" A bit unclear on the concept I guess.

I'd highly recommend a trip to the Blue Lagoon, it's an amazing sight and the combination of hot water and cold air is exhilarating. There is also a spa, bar, and places to eat. I'm not sure if you can normally drink beer in the lagoon, but for this we could.

The water is different temperatures in different areas of the pools. The entire thing is warm, but some sections are really hot, so by moving around you get your choice of heat. Hot water with cold air feels great; it really is a good way to wake yourself up on a Saturday. I wish I had taken some before and after shots of the people on the bus with us... everyone was half awake going out, and totally happy and relaxed on the way back.

Merin suggested SomaFM do some some sound installation there; Groove Salad and Cliqhop music in the "lounge" pool, and a Drone Zone-inspired multispeaker/multichannel installation through the larger and more distant pools. Maybe even some underwater sounds. (Like a giant version of the "Drone Dome" we did at Burning Man a couple years ago.)

Friday Night Update from Iceland Airwaves

I'm a bit backlogged on updates; it's taking forever to edit and upload all the media (not to mention I filled up my macbook drive)... perhaps if I wouldn't shoot so indiscriminately I wouldn't have this problem!

Quickly: saw the Samúel J. Samúelsson Big Band give an incredible performance, too bad they didn't have more time. Imagine the "Taking of Pehlam 123" soundtrack meets James Brown and you kind of get the drift.

Then, the Motion Boys - Icelandic German Electro sassiness...

The big performances of the evening finished up with Gusgus at NASA.

(All images in this message are actually video grabs from a Canon TX1!)

PS- Hi to Jerry, Kelly, Paul and a bunch of other nice folks we hung out with tonight!

CDs are SO EXPENSIVE in Iceland

I am amazed that there is any CD market at all in Iceland when CDs sell for 1995-2295 ISK, or about $30 each.

Even when artists are selling their CDs directly at the venues, they sell them for 1500 ISK, or about $23.

I can't believe how expensive CDs are here.

I was hoping to come back with a big wad of CDs. But I'm not so sure now.

Food Prices in Reykjavik

Last night, we had dinner at Vegamot, a bistro/bar in the city center. The decor is stylish, nordic modernist; the music was good and just loud enough that you could still talk but actively listen to the music as well. It was a combo of chill-house and downtempo, right up my alley... and the food looked good so we sat down.

I was surprised when I saw how relatively affordable it was. Merin had the curry satay salad and I had the chicken enchiladas. US$42.35. Food was good, although the Enchiladas were a creative yet non-standard configuration (i.e. not rolled). A glass of wine each would have added another $20 to that, but we just had water. Ok, I know, that sounds insane by US standards (or European standards!) but food is really expensive in Iceland; generally 50%-100% more than food in the US or EU.

The day before we shared a large pizza at Eldsmiðjunnar, supposedly one of the best pizza places in town. (They were playing some hipster indie rock, one song was an indy/emo cover of Michael Jackson's "Billy Jean" that was really well done.) With a local beer each, it cost US$54.32.

It was a real pizza, not as good as the best I've had in Italy, or not as good as Pizzeria Delfina in San Francisco, but definitely a good pie. Still, that gives you a price check. Comporable Pizza in San Francisco would have been $30 with two beers.

I won't even go into the cocktail prices here... in the land of the $10 beer, the $13 baby shot, and the $16-20 cocktail you realize that people do a lot of drinking at home before they go out... luckily there is lots of housing close to the city center so you can live near the action and not have to drive.

This also has the side-effect of people in music venues coming more for the music and less for the drinking. When a band is playing, people are watching and listening... not ignoring them like often happens in US clubs.

Internet/Telecom in Iceland

I can't make a good judgement call about the net in Iceland, because I have a weak WiFi signal at the hotel, so I'm not sure how much of the slow net is due to the WiFi, the connection of the Hotel, or the connection of the continent.

I did notice that .is sites come up faster than US .com sites... and my photo upload speeds to Flickr seem to be in the 10-15k range a second at best.

However, the internet is everywhere here. Tons of cafés have free WiFi, and every café has people working on laptops in them.

Until I can test speeds at a few more places, I can't really attest to the speed of the net here.

The GSM network supports EDGE but because of the high data roaming charges, I haven't tested it. The cell coverage is pretty impressive, it works everywhere I've been since getting here.

Some of the standout acts tonight at Iceland Airwaves

Two bands who I really liked tonight both have a lot in common: they mix "indie rock" (e.g. guitars and emotion-laden vocals) with electronics.

This is a direction in music that I'm very interested in, there is some really creative stuff being done, and did I mention that Elise and I are working on a new SomaFM channel for just this kind of music? (Coming January 2008 under the current plans.)

Icelandic bands do this really well. Björk is an obvious one to point out. Múm is another. Emily Torrini. You get the idea. They're really into this fusion of rock and electronica over here, and tonight I heard a couple of bands that I really liked and we'll be featuring on the new channel.

Soundspell

Their guitar player also plays synths, often at the same time. They have another keyboard player who mostly plays piano and a few synths. A simplistic description of them would be Jeff Buckley meets Radiohead, but it's more than that.

And they can rock when they need to.

Listen to some of their music here

Shadow Parade

I'm not sure how to describe these guys except that they are a little less electronic than Soundspell, but I'm sure they all grew up listening to progressive rock. Their songs are catchy yet complex, backed by rock-style beats that make you want to dance like a good house track. Some people call this "post rock".

Listen to some of their music here

That's the 2 bands that impressed me tonight.

NASA is a good space; the sound quality was excellent - not too loud but just about right.

Not all pre-parties are created equal

I was a little nervous because we went to a pre-party at Organ on the "second floor", a sort of loft space with just a bunch of bright florescent lights and a "bar" that only had 2 bottles of vodka that ran out before we arrived. Not only was their nothing to drink, but there was no vibe, and while I stuck around to hear a couple songs by Skakkamanage I felt sorry for them having to play in what felt more like rehearsal space than a performance venue. Luckily, this turned out to be a fluke and didn't set the tone for the rest of the evening.

(Note to self: if Finlandia ever sponsors a party of ours, they better bring a lot more than 2 bottles of Vodka!)

The music I've heard so far has been very good. The Reykjavik music scene is very good; I'm looking forward to what we'll hear in the next few days.

The weather has taken a slight turn for the worse. It's started raining, and the wind is now blowing hard. Let's hope that changes before tomorrow night. Reykjavik is a walking town, and the city center is small but still, walking 4 blocks in 30 degree weather with 25 mile an hour winds is pretty harsh.

I'm going to be tired the next few days!

We have the press pass, we have the goodie bag. We have invites to lots of parties. We've gotten a bunch of CDs. Now we just have to cover it all, edit the audio/video, write the blog entries, upload the audio/video, etc.

And let me know if you think there are some artists that I have to see which I may not know about, especially the off-venue stuff.

Did I mention it's cold here? Time for a coffee.

Iceland Airwaves starts tonight!

Iceland Airwaves kicks off tonight, with a pre-opening party at Hressingarskálinn (aka Hressó) in downtown Reykjavik.

We've gotten our badges and wristbands, now it's time to get lunch, take in a few sights, do a bit of planning and get ready to see Soundspell and Shadow Parade at NASA tonight. (NASA the club, not the space agency!)

It's a chilling 33 degrees right now around 1300 local time, good thing we'll be inside for most of the night!

Halloween programming and more

I sent this out to the SomaFM mailing list today:

It's almost Halloween! And our annual Halloween channel has turned into a full-time station from SomaFM called "Doomed" - but just because it's not a special channel, don't forget it's there this Halloween! It's the perfect soundtrack for your halloween party, or just to have playing in the house when the kids come trick or treat-ing.

Two more things:

1) It's music festival time. If you're in New York at the CMJ Music Marathon, keep an eye out for Elise Nordling host of Indie Pop Rocks. Or if your in Iceland for the Airwaves music festival, keep an eye out for Rusty (me!) who will be there as well (hint: come to Ione on Saturday night, I brought a bunch of T-shirts to give away to SomaFM fans).

2) We've revamped the website a bit so that when you launch the station, it now brings up a page showing what's played and gives you a chance to buy downloads from iTunes and CDs from Amazon.com - we make a 5% commission on these sales so whatever you buy helps us out!

AND FINALLY REMEMBER:

SomaFM is listener supported and commercial free! We do this by relying entirely on your for our financial support. Thanks to everyone who has supported SomaFM in the last year and if you haven't supported SomaFM lately, we'd love to have your financial support. We even have automatic monthly subscription programs now, or you can contribute in a lump sum.

If you listen all the time, please support us at the $7.99 a month level minimum. If you only tune in once or twice a week, the $2.99 level. And if you're too poor to support us, even $1 a month will help us. Think of it. You spend more than that on coffee or sodas.

We're a tiny operation and we do this because we love it. But love doesn't pay the bills. (And it costs a lot to run a radio station).

http://somafm.com/support

Thanks for being part of the SomaFM family!

Rusty

Links, Streams, Widgets, etc

A lot of people have been requesting Widgets for MySpace, Facebook, etc. I'd love to hear some feedback on what these widgets should include. It could be as simple as what's currently playing or it could actually be a player that you embed in your page, that starts playing when you go to your page.

I'm not sure how I feel about making the station start auto-playing when you land on a page- but if you want that, give me some feedback and let me know.

I was also thinking about something that showed what was playing on all the channels and sequenced through them - tickertape style - and then had a menu to jump directly to listen to one of the stations.

I'm also about to roll out 128k streams for Windows Media Player... and I'm wondering if that should be the default for Windows users when people click on the station logos? Or if we should still default to whatever app (iTunes, Winamp, etc) handles .pls files?