SomaFM Folk Forward (64k AAC)

The directory lists two streams in the United States under this name, told apart by a number alone. This page is number sixty-four. Nothing here is taken from the other one.

Rank 1074 of 1,481 in the United States. What that mostly measures is how many people have already found the station through this directory, which is a poor proxy for anything else and an honest one to publish.

SomaFM Folk Forward (64k AAC) shares its leading tag, alt-folk, with two other United States entries. Across every country the directory has 3 stations leading with it, so the rail below is mostly a trip abroad.

SomaFM Folk Forward (64k AAC) streams at 64 kbps against the United States' median of 128, which is less than half the local norm. On a dial where 49% of stations reach 128 kbps, a rate this low stands out, and it usually means either a speech station that never needed more or an encoder that has not been touched in years.

The audio comes from ice5.somafm.com, and 31 other stations in the United States are served from the same address. That is a streaming platform carrying many broadcasters rather than a station running its own server, which is worth knowing for a practical reason: when a platform has a bad night, a whole block of the United States' listing stops answering at once and nothing is wrong with any of the stations in it.