SomaFM Groove Salad 2 (256k MP3)

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

SomaFM Groove Salad 2 (256k MP3) sits at 580 of 1,481 in the United States' listing, in the body of the list rather than at either end. This is where most of a national dial actually lives, and it is the part a country hub's first fifty rows never reach.

At 256 kbps, SomaFM Groove Salad 2 (256k MP3) streams at more than double the United States' median of 128 kbps. That is a deliberate choice by whoever runs it: bandwidth is the recurring cost of an internet station, and a rate this far above the local norm is money spent on sounding better than the dial around it.

The audio comes from ice6.somafm.com, and 36 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.