SomaFM Black Rock FM (32k)

SomaFM Black Rock FM (32k) sits in the tail of the United States' 1,481 entries. The tail is the part of a directory that goes missing first, and it is the part worth keeping: the head of every country's list is the same handful of national broadcasters, and everything that makes a dial local is behind them.

SomaFM Black Rock FM (32k) has a zero in the directory's open count. It is the least interesting number on this page and the one most likely to be misread, so it is worth being plain: it measures traffic through radio-browser, not audience.

Nothing else in the United States' listing leads with burning man. The tag is self-declared, which makes it a statement of how the broadcaster positions itself rather than a classification anyone audited, and on this dial that statement is unique.

The gap here is large: 32 kbps where the United States' stations typically run 128. Rates at this level were designed for dial-up and for mobile data that was billed by the megabyte, and plenty of stations simply never changed the setting.

The stream address on this entry points at ice2.somafm.com, which is where 35 other stations in the United States are served from as well. Platforms of that size carry the long tail of a country's dial, and they are the reason a listing can look broken when it is one host having a quiet hour.