I found SomaFM to be a much better music discovery experience than the "big company" generic recommendation systems. I found some real gems there, and the gem-to-vanilla ratio is higher than most. I assume SomaFM's playlists must be manually/human curated, with tracks rotated in and out regularly, to be this good.
SomaFM
71–80 of 170 posts
Re: SomaFM
#72SomeFM is such a rarity these days, a reminder of how we believed the Internet was going to be. They take recurring donations. Probably the best way to help them and one of the best investments for me, as keeping it up and running is a way to keep these naive ideas alive. The music is curated and is most excellent (for my taste, of course). I have Groove Salad on speed dial in my HomePods around the house (through Tu…
> SomeFM is such a rarity these days, a reminder of how we believed the Internet was going to be. Let me start out by saying that SomaFM is great. But when I started listening to SomaFM (nearly 20 years ago), I never imagined that for only $10/month I'd be able to listen to (essentially) any song whenever I wanted. That's amazing and so much more valuable (to me) than what Soma offers.
Oh my mother loves SomaFM. The thing is that you can just switch it on an it is good, and it will be in 5 years time as well without you having to do anything at all.
Re: SomaFM
#73Oh man! I haven't listened to SomaFM since like 2007. So glad they're still around, can't wait to dive back into my old favorite channels, like "Drone Zone" and "Secret Agent". Gonna start a recurring donation as well.
Re: SomaFM
#74Radio Paradise [1] is also going strong after 20+ years. Fantastic curation and you can even stream in lossless for free (or at least I seem to be able to from the Android TV app). [1] https://radioparadise.com/
Agreed!
I've been "harvesting" their playlist (via their published RSS feed) for ~5 years now, storing an entry for each played song in a MySQL db table. I'm not doing anything with this data right now, but at some point in the future when Bill & Rebecca retire, I take comfort in knowing I'll be able to munge together a lot of RP-quality playlists. :)
Re: SomaFM
#75Groove Salad For Lyfe
Groove Salad, or Groove Salad Classic?
Re: SomaFM
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
> SomeFM is such a rarity these days, a reminder of how we believed the Internet was going to be. Let me start out by saying that SomaFM is great. But when I started listening to SomaFM (nearly 20 years ago), I never imagined that for only $10/month I'd be able to listen to (essentially) any song whenever I wanted. That's amazing and so much more valuable (to me) than what Soma offers.
But how do you find new songs for you to put on your playlists? That’s why SomaFM and online stations like KCRW are so valuable. They’re ways to introduce new music and even new styles of music to the listeners.
I use Spotify but I loathe their recommendation algorithm. What I do when I want to discover new songs is that I search for a user playlist on r/spotify, or if there is a particular song I like, I use this website[1], which I recently discovered and which enables one to specify a song and get a list of public playlists featuring this song. It works pretty well in my case.
[1] https://www.chosic.com/spotify-playlist-search-tool-by-song-...
Re: SomaFM
#77I remember this from way back when, even the channel icons, but it had blurred together with Digitally Imported. I didn't realize it was a separate entity until now.
Re: SomaFM
#78Listening to it now, and I did donate :)
Re: SomaFM
#79SomaFM is an amazing institution. I was introduced to it mid/early 2000's by travelling tech nomad from Germany that passed by Bucharest; I spread it to my family (dad keeps a recurring donation going and we have a family heirloom soma fm t-shirt). Fast forward to now, my 2mo old seems to enjoy Space Station Soma, and, if I'm lucky, falls asleep on Deep Space One.
I hope future generations will get to enjoy it. As others said (tbatchelli), "it's an example of how we believed the Internet is going to be".
Thanks!
Re: SomaFM
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
> SomeFM is such a rarity these days, a reminder of how we believed the Internet was going to be. Let me start out by saying that SomaFM is great. But when I started listening to SomaFM (nearly 20 years ago), I never imagined that for only $10/month I'd be able to listen to (essentially) any song whenever I wanted. That's amazing and so much more valuable (to me) than what Soma offers.
To each their own, I guess. I also pay for Apple Music and have access to all that music, but there is no substitute for curation with a sense of taste and musical direction. For me, having access to all the music in the world is only marginally better than what I had before when buying CDs (or records even); I don't listen to more music than before. What I really love, instead, is being introduced to a new track tha…
To be honest, Pandora has served that role for me over the years. I am always amazed to look back at my Pandora station history to see how it has evolved into different streams/genres, all stimulated from hearing new music through a Pandora channel, and then starting a new station after I liked it. This has created a web of new music I wouldn't have sought out otherwise.
Obviously, I do think that a human DJ may perform this role better in some cases/genres though.