Somafm playlists • 2 Jan 2010
Somafm.com is one of my favourite internet radio stations. I wrote a little program which will download all the channels they offer (about 20), so I can start my media player with it directly, instead of having to go via their website.
Still to do: I have to rewrite the program to use lxml instead of BeautifulSoup.
Download the python program or an example playlist.

# Download internet radio playlists from somafm.com,
# ready to open and play in a mediaplayer (like VLC or XMMS).
#
# Written by Michiel Overtoom, motoom@xs4all.nl, november 2009 - january 2010.
import urllib2
import BeautifulSoup
import re
def download_playlist(name):
''' Retrieve a playlist from somafm.com and save to a local file.
The channel name should be a bare name, such as "bootliquor" or "lush". '''
doc = urllib2.urlopen("http://www.somafm.com/startstream=%s.pls" % name)
contents = doc.read()
f = open("somafm.%s.pls" % name,"wt")
f.write(contents)
f.close()
# Retrieve the somafm.com homepage and pry the channel names from it.
if __name__ == "__main__":
# isolate 'doomed' from a string as '<a href="/play/doomed56">'.
re_channelname = re.compile("play/([a-z]*)")
doc = urllib2.urlopen("http://www.somafm.com")
soup = BeautifulSoup.BeautifulSoup(doc)
channels = set()
for a in soup.findAll("a"):
href = a['href']
m = re_channelname.search(href)
if m:
channels.add(m.group(1))
# Download a playlist for every channel found.
for channel in channels:
print "Downloading '%s' playlist" % channel
try:
download_playlist(channel)
except urllib2.HTTPError:
print "This channel is nonexistent; ignoring"
Some of my other favourite internet radio stations are frisky (playlist), proton (playlist), schizoid (psy, chill, progressive) and digitally imported.
Comments
doug-hoherty@hotmail.com • 17 May 2010
not only that, also a live video webcast, see http://www.dnalounge.com/webcast/
murkk • 8 Jun 2010
It's DNA Lounge, not club dna!
John • 12 Aug 2010
Soma FM is also located in San Francisco. Apparently, SoMa is a neighbourhood in SF. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_of_Market
a • 25 Apr 2011
hve u checked out reciva.com
flying.flynn@yahoo.com.flynn • 23 Oct 2012
Dear god, of course soma is a neighborhood in sf.
Ivan • 6 Dec 2013
FF, some of us non-SF types may not have known SoMa was an SF neighborhood. So, it's not "of course" for everyone.
Ellen • 17 May 2010
Did you know that Jamie Zawinksy (of Club DNA, in San Francisco) also has a internet radio broadcast? Live!