History and Design

"I couldn't find anything (on the radio) I wanted to listen to."

R. Hodge

The brainchild of Rusty Hodge, SomaFM (www.somafm.com) first came online in early 2000 with a single 56Kbps live stream. His site's popularity soon convinced him to upgrade his authoring computers, increase the number of programs and bit rate channels, and move the servers to a co-location facility. Less than a year after it began, SomaFM had a SHOUTcast-sponsored repeater service allowing 500 additional concurrent streams. But even that hasn't been enough. Recent peak statistics showed 2,141 simultaneous users and, according to SHOUTcast figures, SomaFM has more than 100,000 listeners per month. Not bad for a streaming Web site with no advertising, no deep pockets, and only word of mouth promotion.

Hodge and a small group of volunteers operate SomaFM, which currently offers six streaming programs in a variety of bit rates. The Web site has a news area for the sporadic posts documenting the trials and victories of running a thoroughly underfunded venture on inspiration and available resources. A typical message found in November 2001: "SomaFM stations accrued 636,974 total listener hours in the last 30 days. On average, we have 884 concurrent listeners. This is significantly higher than many venture-capital funded, commercial Internet broadcasters. You are helping change the way radio works! Thank you so much for listening and being part of SomaFM."

The design of the site is basic, indicating a focus on music. You won't see a Flash intro or blinking objects just simple links to primary areas: News, Playlists, Listen Now (to the programs), Community, and Donate.

The site asks for donations, providing links to PayPal and the Amazon Honor System. Listeners do contribute (see the next section "Building and Maintaining Community"). Other revenue comes from a link to music retail site Amazon.com. Every time a listener on the SomaFM Web site clicks the link to Amazon.com and buys a CD, a small sum is paid to SomaFM. Listeners also post their comments on the community page. Occasionally, a comment warrants a reply. The Webmaster works full time for a large Fortune 500 company, so he's not able to answer every e-mail.

The physical space is a small room in San Francisco. In the little South of Market squatter's palace are turntables, mics, the authoring computers and a mixer setup for streaming the occasional live performance. Hodge spends between 15 and 20 hours per week maintaining the site, manually tuning the playlists throughout the day based on "what sounds good" and using listener requests to modify the song order. Every week or two, he adds new material.