Talk:SomaFM

Image

Apologies, but an animated gif does not a better image make. This isn't just my policy, it's also Wikipedia's: "Inline animations should be used sparingly; a static image with a link to the animation is preferred unless the animation has a very small file size." jareha ^(comments) 04:18, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Note: This in response to an edit summary on this article by NightMonkey. jareha ^(comments) 04:20, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I appreciate your opinion, but I believe this image is fine aesthetically (though a little dated - they've added a few channels since), better legally, and complies with the policy you quote.

• There is only one animated image in this article ("..used sparingly...")
• This image is only 24KB in size ("...unless the animation has a very small file size.").
• This is the authorized image from the copyright holder (better than the "fair use" image put in its place).

Cheers. --NightMonkey 17:41, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

With regards to policy, my opinion of the meaning of "used sparingly": use a static image, instead of an animated one, if such an option exists (and one does: Image:SomaFM.gif).

Also, Rusty Hodge only granted use to Wikipedia. This — albeit unintentionally on his part — violates Wikipedia's downstream use policy. jareha ^(comments) 18:38, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I think you might be right, in part. The section you reference is not policy, but part of the WP guideline on "Fair Use" (only section 5 is actual WP policy). However, I agree that, since the goal of WP is to have everything possible licensed under an unencumbered "Free" license, the image I used for the original article isn't as good as a "Fair Use" image. While we may differ on the aesthetics, I think that, for now, your image is better from a licensing standpoint. I'll return your image to the article, pending an e-mail to Rusty. I'll also try to see if he'll license your image as well under the GFDL (though I did mention that in my original e-mail to him, and he declined, as you can read). I think he might not want to give up the trademark rights, but I have to read the GFDL again to see if he's giving that up in addition to the copyright.

Gah, I need a lawyer to properly use Wikipedia... :) --NightMonkey 22:27, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Play nice, please

When the original, larger and older article was merged into this one without seeking consensus to change the name or moving the existing Talk page here, I didn't complain. But, we need to keep in mind that the older article had editors, a Talk page, and history, and we should play nice, and not arbitrarily remove components that were long present there without seeking consensus. I re-added the "NOTOC" tag that jareha just removed. The article is too short, at present, to need to waste screen real-estate on a TOC. Thanks. --NightMonkey 02:48, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Some responses to your thoughts:

• There was no existing talk page at the old, pre-merge article (see Talk:Somafm).
• When merging the two articles, I made sure no content from either article was lost.
• I believe I've played nice, honest! Some of my bolder edits may have not have come off this way; that said, consensus would've avoided any potential issues — apologies for skipping that route.
• As for table of contents, I thought you'd added __NOTOC__ to keep the article from breaking when the banner image was in place. With a new image in place, I thought I was removing something you'd accidentally missed.

Finally, if you are still unhappy with my merge we can request an administrator's help and have article histories combined. jareha ^(comments) 03:39, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

No worries! Thanks for responding. You are correct - the old Talk page was empty. I should have said that it was available to use, not say that there was anything to merge (indeed, there was not). Sorry about my confused response on that one. Also, just for the record, the NOTOC was there for the purpose you mention (image fixing) as well as for shortening the page. Of course, if the page gets longer, I'm certainly not opposed to removing it. Cheers! --NightMonkey 07:17, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Glad we could work this out! jareha ^(comments) 19:45, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

12 channels in 2002?

Can anyone list the 12 channels that were active in 2002? The article coincidentally lists 12 channels, but I don't know if they're the old channels restored (doubtful), or contain new channels (likely). It would be interesting to have a "retired channels" section. --MinorContributor 20:02, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

I guess I found some of them via the internet archive [1], but that's still only nine channels. --MinorContributor 19:51, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

SomaFM January 2002 lineup: Groove Salad, Secret Agent, Drone Zone, Squidradio Downtempo, Squidradio drum'n'bass, Soma House Party, Cliqhop. The May 2002 Lineup: Groove Salad, Secret Agent, Drone Zone, Squidradio Downtempo, Squidradio drum'n'bass, Soma House Party, Indie Pop Rocks, Cliqhop, Beat Blender, We Are Electro (Trial channel), Jazz Masterz (Trial channel). When SomaFM officially re-launched on November 30, 2002, it was with the following channels: Groove Salad, Secret Agent, Drone Zone, Indie Pop Rocks, Beat Blender, Cliqhop 76.191.139.200 (talk) 22:45, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Why was the list of channels taken out of the article? I can understand the difficulty of having a long list and keeping it up to date, but you can't really describe what SomaFM is with just a one-sentence "SomaFM broadcasts electronic music, indie rock and lounge music, among other genres." Also, it would be interesting to know how the channels evolved over time, where they came from, which ones are most listened to and the like. The list above at least gives a partial sense of when some channels were added or abandoned. Also, I have always felt that part of SomaFM's success is its dedication to music that's not heard elsewhere. There is a strong electronica motif running through most of the stations, but it's not the kind of house music you hear all over in clubs. That is worth mentioning somehow, how SomaFM is essentially giving life to these genres. (Groove Salad => ambient, Secret Agent => Bondesque lounge/jazz) And this gets into the channel lineup, since it's tied together with it. Sluggoster (talk) 11:08, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Added a table with the channels. Sluggoster (talk) 04:47, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Neutrality

I've marked the article to be checked for neutrality, primarily as a result of some of the statements in the "Conflict with the RIAA" section. Reading the snippet, "designed – in the opinion of many online broadcasters – to drive those broadcasters out of business", it paints the RIAA as a sort of menace. Additional parts, such as the apparent claim that Hodge himself is responsible for the Small Broadcasters Amendment Act, even if true, are completely unsubstantiated. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 18:57, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

I've tagged the "in the opinion of many online broadcasters" for WP:WEASEL. The sentence can almost certainly be reworded more neutrally. I also took out the wording that implied cause-and-effect with the Small Broadcasters Amendment. Anything else to be addressed regarding neutrality? SlubGlub (talk) 18:55, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Added references to the testimony here, and corrected some things that the references contradicted. 76.191.139.200 (talk) 02:21, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Coatrack

This article is acting as a coatrack on the subject of disputes between RIAA and Internet broadcasters over royalty rates. It is also, somewhat, a coatrack on the subject of Rusty Hodge rather than SomaFM, but that's not as egregious. The "Conflict with RIAA" stuff should, in my opinion, (1) be scaled way back, (2) be integrated into the History section rather than separate from it, (3) moved to a more appropriate article, or some combination of those 3 options. SlubGlub (talk) 04:20, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

The history and programming sections have been expanded since the comment was written. I believe it's no longer a coatrack. Sluggoster (talk) 04:04, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Commercial-free?

Is it actually commercial-free? Because it seems like every half an hour or so, they'll interrupt the music to beg listeners for money. Yeah, their own website says they're commercial-free, but what if they're lying? Do those not count as commercials or something? 74.70.57.184 (talk)

No, they don't. Every listener-supported radio station does this. The appeals aren't every half hour. I listen to SomaFM 25 hours a week and I hear only a couple appeals a day. They also seem to come in bunches: every few months there's a few days with more frequent appeals (probably when the news page says donations are unusually low), then it goes back down to normal. Sluggoster (talk) 02:00, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

I guess technically those announcements could be considered advertisements. But we all know what's generally meant by the word "advertisements" or "commercials". I actually asked Rusty (SomaFM's founder) if there was any way to be able to subscribe to SomaFM and get a special announcement-free subscriber stream, but apparently this isn't quite as easy to achieve --Bruce (talk) 13:26, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Notability and third-party sources

To explain my tags, the article lacks independent sources, which are needed to establish notability. Wikipedia isn't a platform for promotion, no matter how sincere the cause. While this site may be donation-based, both for-profit and non-profit groups need this level of sourcing. This guideline is used to, among other things, prevent Wikipedia from being misused for spam. See WP:NORG for details on what is expected.

Another problem is the WP:PRIMARY sources about the copyright issues. Wikipedia is a tertiary source, and we do not rely on individual editors to analyze these things to come to any complex conclusions. Instead, we rely on secondary sources to do the work for us. As far as I can tell, none of these sources are truly independent of the topic. We should not rely on press releases, or court documents, or federal regulations. Some independent sources need to be found and added. Grayfell (talk) 06:05, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

Hey Grayfell, these are all good points. After about an hour of work I think I've found significant verifiable, scholarly, and more importantly, third-party references to the station that should quell the WP:PRIMARY issues, and more than enough to show that the station is notable.

I've found that the station was:

1. The primary subject of a copyright law journal article published by the George Washington University Law School.
2. The primary subject of a San Francisco newspaper article in 2004.
3. Discussed in a print book about the history of on-line broadcasting in 2016.

I think that these three sources alone might be enough to lift the issues tag on the article and I welcome your response. Ke6jjj (talk) 05:48, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 15:46, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

SomaFM Current and Historical Channel List Removal

See

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Dissident93#SomaFM_changes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Grayfell#SomaFM_edits — Preceding unsigned comment added by Somafmlistener (talk • contribs) 06:30, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

I just posted a comment about these exact issues directly above this one. Grayfell (talk) 06:43, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

Why does the list of former channels keep getting removed? While I removed some of them that were very short-lived ones from the early 2000s, there are other channels that ran a long time and should be included? --72.234.31.127 (talk) 20:08, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

The wikipedia page for Earwaves currently redirects to SomaFM. http://wikipedia.com/wiki/Earwaves Silent Channel's Kim Cascone's wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Cascone references the SomaFM page as well, so I think it would be good to at least include those 2 former channels. --72.234.31.127 (talk) 21:40, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

• Can we simply not just include them in the list with a note or something signifying they are no longer active? I just don't think we should have a table for 3-4 entries. ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 09:37, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

• • If your only objection is stylistic, then a single list of channels would be fine with a note for the significant inactive ones.72.234.31.127 (talk) 01:28, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

Awards and recognition

"most of these awards are given to the people curating the playlists, not the actual stations themselves"

Are they not the creators of the channels? And the awards are for the people and what they did on those channels.

"the awards themselves do not really seem that notable to begin with, and are nothing more than music fan/bloggers' opinion"

SFBG San Francisco Bay Guardian was a significant weekly publication in San Francisco. CMJ was College Music Journal, an important if not the most important publication for college radio. The Mixcloud Online Radio Awards https://www.mora.fm is not a blog either. Here are other references to winners of the Mixcloud Online Radio Awards (aka Online Radio Awards): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Brooklyn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTS_Radio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soho_Radio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Light_Radio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiona_Ritchie

Perhaps these should go in the history section, not a separate awards section? These pages do it that way:

(SFBG Best of the Bay awards) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottom_of_the_Hill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootie_(club_night) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eat_Real_Festival

However, this page lists it in a separate awards section:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writers_with_Drinks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.234.31.127 (talk) 20:36, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

• I re-added the citations, but cut down on the actual prose. ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 09:36, 4 January 2020 (UTC)