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Found this thanks to HN and have been really enjoying it for work and study music over the last month. It's hard to keep a good playlist that doesn't get stale, anyone have other stations? I also use Music for Programming[1] and various lofi playlists often.

[1]: https://musicforprogramming.net/latest/

this is great! has been listening for a while when need a nice background music at work
I really miss Shoutcast/Icecast being such an active part of my life. The quality is way down, and there's like 1/6th the channels there used to be. For electronica in particular, there was just so much. But there were also so many random niche stations!

SomaFM continues to be a great place for highly genre-d music. I make sure to give em money semi-regularly. Suburbs of Goa[1] is one of my favorite.

[1] https://somafm.com/suburbsofgoa/

There are still quite a few though. I have several bookmarks on my normal PC and in AIMP on mobile. I never did "outgrow" my practice of using multiple bookmarked streaming stations as my daily "radio dial".
There may not be as much Icecast stuff but internet radio is doing very well.

Someone else has already mentioned nts.live (it has a huge range of stuff, more like a radio station) but other UK-based stations are balamii.com, supremefm.com and rinse.fm (Rinse used to be a pirate radio station but went legal).

Internet radio stations are the go to for up to date music really.

> For electronica in particular, there was just so much. But there were also so many random niche stations!

Indeed. I remember regularly switching between Massinova and a rebroadcast Polish classical station whose DJ had a nice voice.

Shpongle and OTT are amazing goa-ish electronica. OTT's new album is great.
Good to know SomaFM is still round, its been 20+ years at this point.
I've probably been streaming SomaFM off and on for the last 15-20 years. Thanks for the reminder to donate!
I think I used to listen to SomaFM, or something with a similar name.

If so then that’s one of the radio streams I found via the xiph Icecast directory.

https://dir.xiph.org/

You can listen to these Icecast stations using for example VLC media player, or mpv, or you can also play them directly in most web browsers.

I discovered SomaFM channels (SomaFM, Secret agent, GrooveSalad) from iTunes Radio around 2003. Listened to it always while working on my computer while studying in university. Good memories and so happy they are still around!
Same here. I didn't realize it was still around and not only that the links still open in the apple music desktop app and you can save them in a playlist. Unfortunately doesn't look like they carry over to the phone app but they have a paid app.
Really impressive that they've stayed online nearly 20 years. I used to listen to this and MonkeyRadio all the time. They've added a lot of new channels though.
hah! was just wondering what happened to monkeyradio... iirc it was one of the winamp developers who did the selecting...
It died but the playlists are on Spotify and elsewhere.
First music I ever "streamed" and still excellent. Thank you, Rusty!
SomaFM is one of the sites I like to donate to when I can. I also use their Amazon affiliate link as an Amazon bookmark. Drone Zone has been my main background music when working for a couple of years now!
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Listening to this since musciforhackers.com went down. Donated a bitcoin back when they were still cheap. Rusty also DJ's at Defcon.
Definitely one of the gems of what we now call the indie-web.

I envy Rusty his attention span.

https://psychedelicized.com/ Has some nice unknown 60-70s psychedelic tracks. Let are lots unknown good but also very bad stuff from this time.

Fun to listen to while working.

Love it! Been a fan for many years. Would still love to find the archive of music/sounds from musicforhackers.com from years ago. That was an epic channel.
Did you mean this site? It has some pretty great content. https://musicforprogramming.net/one
That is cool! But no, Music for Hackers was a great combo of ambient/underground music overlaid with old movie audio samples and other stuff. Played from maybe 2000-2008 or something? Can't remember when it died.

https://web.archive.org/web/20010402042427/http://musicforha...

I have very fond memories of Music for Hackers ("soundscapes for compromising a remote host"). Have never found anything that fills that particular niche the same way.
you might like the DEFCON channel on somafm
The fact that they are still around is a testament to "Web 1.0" always having been worthwhile...
I had somehow forgotten about SomaFM, used to listen to it all the time but haven't in over a decade. I think I thought it had been shut down, I'm probably thinking of LastFM.
SomaFM was what I used to listen to on backtrack Linux back in the day, as it was one of the sites bookmarked in firefox.

wierdly enough I literally remembered about them 2 hours ago and put on defcon radio. Weird to see it pop up again now after i had forgot about it for so long.

I've been donating to SomaFM for many years, and it is my music provider of choice in my home office (Space Station Soma for me). Some years ago I had an afternoon to kill while visiting San Francisco and Rusty was kind enough to let me stop by and say hello. A quick 10 minute visit turned into one of the most interesting two hours I've spent in my entire life. Rusty gave me the whole tour of the software interface that runs SomaFM and we had a fascinating discussion about the history of SomaFM in particular and streaming music in general. Thanks again Rusty!
Did you meet Big Url too?
I always thought it was "Big Earl". You're right!
Well, I've known Url since he was just a little Perl script. <g>
It's been several years but I also had the pleasure of meeting Rusty down at the studio once. My dad has now made it a habit; he's been to SF for work and pleasure four or five times now, and met up with him each time, I believe.

I have been listening to Soma for at least 15 years. Definitely a great place to have bookmarked.

I've been listening since 2004. Every 4 or 5 years I'll realize how much it's been a part of my life through thick and thin, and write him a gushing email. He always has the grace to reply.

Would absolutely love to meet him some day

I love the station that mixes ambient + SF service radio
If you’re into unique well curated collections of music across wide ranges of genres, I highly recommend checking out NTS Radio, it’s also listener supported:

https://nts.live

So awesome to see this here. Been listening to, donating to and recommending SomaFM since for 15 years.