Radio Radio!!!

Over the course of the past thirty six of being a music lover I have discovered many great bands through college and public radio. It has always been a great avenue to discover new and upcoming artists and to breakaway from the boring and dreadful consistency of your everyday commercial "modern rock" radio or the typical redunancy of the local classic rock radio station. Over the past couple of years college radio stations have been being sold to different programmers. Mainly classical, religious changing the format for the station with little or no notice to anyone involved in the station until they are escorted out and the streams changed. This to try and make the college more money than they already have. Some 350 stations have stood up for this with little or no success. Very few have have been offered to take the shows online while some haven't been even offered that.

The Age of Internet Radio

Since the big internet boom in the 1990s radio stations started broadcasting their streams online. And then a wave of user reccommended stations based on what you type in. Pandora, last.fm are probably the two most popular. I can see why Pandora can work for some people. I listen to it occassionaly with my family. I usually take to last.fm. Streaming from your home computer is free with outside certain areas having to pay a monthly subscription fee. What do I like about last.fm? 1)Variety. There is so much more variety for someone like me who loves al sorta of music. 2) Obscurity. There seems to be a lot more obscurity with last.fm. I can type in many artists I can't find on Pandora and they will pop on last.fm almost guaranteed. From that obscure raging hardcore band I've seen in some club 15 years ago to any band I've seen on MTVs 120 Minutes 25 years ago. I don't believe Pandora offers this. If you type in any artist say, The Smiths. You will here the same three bands over and over for the duration of your listen. Smiths, Morrissey, The Cure, Psychedelic Furs. Trust me, I know. I normally wouldn't have a problem with this but sometimes can get a little to repetitive. The rotation for an artist is less repetitive on last.fm. Also genres. With last.fm you can type in a genre, not something like "Rock" or "Alternative" but something a little different. I've used the indiepop, c86, Britpop, Paisley Underground and many other searches before and the results are amazing. The "Your Recommended" station based on *EVERYTHING* you have typed in in the past is also a nice feature. I continue using this today.

My family and I own a Roku box. It's basically an internet streaming device for your television. We can stream Netflix & Amazon On Demand. This has help cut cable costs considerably with all the options. There many movie stations you can download and install into the device that make it exciting to use. A 50s & 60s SciFi & Horror station, A KungFu station. Lot's of fun. The Roku also offers many radio stations ready to stream on demand. Both Pandora & last.fm are available. While searching through all the free stations to install I stumbled across SomaFM. A streaming internet radio station. Unlike last.fm and Pandora its not based on someting you type in to the search engine. It's all streaming "live" & by genre. SomaFM offers a number of great stations. I have been listening to this for about a year (whenever that free time comes) and never get bored with the rotation or the selection they play. The two most popular in my house, Indie Pop Rocks and the Underground 80s stations. A station entirely dedticated to synthpop and undeground new wave. How can we go wrong with that?

SomaFM also offers several different types of electronic stations as well as Trip Hop, Drone, Americana, Jazz, Industrial, Lounge. Music your typical hipster will love. Just recently, in 2011 SomaFM has added the station 480 Minutes with the tagline "What alternative rock radio would sound like had Nirvana never happened." Yeah I like the sound of that. I haven't had a chance to listen to that yet but look forward to. If I like it enough I am sure you will read about it here.

As I type this, this is what is on SomaFM.

How can you go wrong with a station that breaks out a classic like the Trash Can Sinatras? It's not Nirvana so I am thankful they don't think Nirvana is the be all end all of "MODERN ROCK" or "ALTERNATIVE".