SomaFM The Dark Zone (256k MP3)

Out of 1,481 entries in the United States, this one ranks 341. The upper quarter of a national list is an interesting place to be: well known enough to have accumulated opens, not so well known that it is the station everybody already had.

Broadcasting in English, alongside most of the United States' other entries. The country page breaks the remaining five languages out with counts, which is usually a quicker read of who lives somewhere than any summary.

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

At 256 kbps, SomaFM The Dark Zone (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 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.