02/25/2007Web Radio by Jennifer DeLeo
You still can't listen to Howard Stern or Rush Limbaugh online, yet according to Arbitron, roughly 44 million Americans--mostly young adults at work--log on for radio each month. Thankfully, the PC makers have made it easy with pre-loaded music players, from Apple's ITunes and QuickTime, to Real Player and Windows Media Player. There are also a number of Web radio sites that offer customizable programming using their own players or ones already loaded onto your PC.
Most sites feature dozens of different musical genres from baroque to zydeco and some allow you to tune in to live broadcasts from around the globe. Broadband access is a big plus and some of the streams are so good you can enjoy them over your home stereo system.
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.
Soma FM |
