TIL that weird old radio streaming site from 2003 still works

I stumbled on SomaFM last week after forgetting about it for maybe 15 years, and I was sure it would be dead or full of ads by now. Turns out it's still running exactly like it did back in college, just playing weird ambient and electronic stuff without any popups or signups. Has anyone else found a site you thought was long gone that just kept chugging along?

2 comments

2 Comments

paul3301d ago

still playing weird ambient and electronic stuff without any popups" - man that's exactly it. The thing nobody talks about is how these old sites are basically time capsules of internet culture before everything got ruined by ads and subscriptions. SomaFM never tried to be a billion dollar thing, they just wanted to stream music and that's it. I bet the same guy still runs it from his basement or whatever, probably hasn't changed the design since 2004 either. Its kind of refreshing to find something online that hasn't been optimized to death or turned into a cash grab. Makes you wonder how many other little corners of the old web are still humming along if you just know where to look.

nathan_torres341d agoMost Upvoted

The real wild part is that stuff like SomaFM actually proves the whole "if you're not paying, you're the product" thing is optional. People just decided somewhere along the way that everything has to be a data farm or a subscription trap, but these old stations show it never had to be that way. Rusty Hodge has been running SomaFM out of San Francisco for like 20 years and still does a yearly fundraiser where they just ask for donations, no ads, no tracking. Makes you realize how much of the internet's current mess is just a choice people made, not some inevitable law of technology. Kinda makes me want to dig up more stuff from before 2010 before it all gets swallowed by the enshittification machine.