SomaFM Secret Agent (32k AAC)

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

In the United States' ordering this is number 787 of 1,481, which is the middle of the list. The stations either side of it are a better guide to what the country sounds like than the head of the list is, because the head is the same few famous streams in every country.

The open count against SomaFM Secret Agent (32k AAC) is two, which is enough to know the stream has been played through the directory and not enough to compare it with anything. Small counts are the normal case out here, and a ranking built from them separates stations by luck as much as by interest.

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 audio comes from ice2.somafm.com, and 35 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.