SomaFM Groove Salad (64k AAC)

SomaFM Groove Salad (64k AAC) is one of three entries in the United States whose names are the same but for a number, and this one's number is sixty-four. A broadcaster numbering its streams like that is separating feeds, not stations, so read the number as the part that matters.

Position 170 of 1,481 in the United States. The ordering is a click count and nothing more, but at this depth it still separates stations meaningfully, which stops being true further down the same list.

Tagged ambient, along with 52 other stations in the country and 171 across the directory.

The gap here is large: 64 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 is AAC. the United States' dial is split across three formats rather than settled on one, with MP3 the commonest, so this station is on a well populated side of a genuinely mixed listing.

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.