Industry Internet radio Headquarters San Francisco, CA Website SomaFM.com | Founded February 2000 Key people Rusty Hodge, Founder | |
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SomaFM is an independent Internet-only streaming group of radio channels, supported entirely with donations from listeners. SomaFM originally started broadcasting out of founder Rusty Hodge's basement garage in the Bernal Heights neighborhood of San Francisco, as a micropower radio station broadcast at the Burning Man festival in 1999. The response to the project was sufficiently positive that Rusty Hodge launched it as a full-time internet radio station in February 2000.
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SomaFM takes its name from Soma, the "perfect pleasure drug" from Aldous Huxley's 1932 novel Brave New World, and the South of Market neighborhood of San Francisco, known colloquially as SoMa. SomaFM's twelve channels reached a peak listenership of 10,000 concurrent listeners by 2002, and now reports nearly 6 million "listener hours" every month.
Awards and credits
Elise Nordling, music director and curator of Indie Pop Rocks! and Folk Forward, was awarded the San Francisco Bay Guardian's "Best DJ of the Bay" award in 2005, 2007, and 2009. In 2007, they wrote that "DJ Elise is renowned for her impeccable taste, encompassing everything from bleeding-edge unsigned bands to classic small-label favorites... Because of this pioneer's curatorship, Indie Pop Rocks! has become required listening on a global scale." The San Francisco Bay Guardian also awarded SomaFM a "Best of the Bay" award in 2005 for "Best Way to Avoid the Top 40."
Conflict with SoundExchange
In May 2002, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel rate ruling came into effect, requiring internet broadcasters to pay a per song per listener royalty to SoundExchange for the performance of the sound recording, retroactively through October 1998. Hodge estimated that the channel could have been forced to pay over $1,000 USD per day to continue operations. The royalty was later reduced by half, but that rate still would require payments by SomaFM that exceeded their revenues.
In June 2002, SomaFM ceased broadcasting. Hodge was one of several webcasters who testified before the U.S. Congress in 2002 in the hopes of reducing the royalty rate. Subsequently, Congress passed the Small Webcaster Settlement Act of 2002 (SWSA) on November 15, 2002, which enabled small webcasters to negotiate a lower rate with SoundExchange. SomaFM resumed broadcasting in late November 2002 under this new royalty structure.
On June 26, 2007, SomaFM participated in the "Internet Radio Day of Silence" in protest of the Copyright Royalty Board's decision at the time to raise royalty fees for internet radio stations.