Soma is a suite of programs that let you play and schedule audio files from the Web.

Soma is a suite of programs that let you play and schedule audio files from the Web.

Soma suite supports extra utilities using run-time loadable modules and includes a broadcasting scheduler, a tool to control it via TCP/IP, and an utility to check configuration file syntax.

Soma project started in summer 2003 to manage the digital version of an activists radio old spools.

The first release just gave just the chance to play random some audio files in a directory using an external program (at that time mpg123). In despite of that this software was never used, i kept on thinking about soma project for some weeks, until i started directly to work with a group called Reload, which was experimenting at the time a project called "eterete" and creating a place for a web radio at Pergola Tribe (a selfmanaged house in Milan).

We used, of course, a release, which was a little bit better to manage the radio-playlist and of course we implemented the software itself. From september till december soma became a software suite, configurable through file and (remote administration...). That's thanks to the relationships and the inputs that such a community like Reload can create.

A group of passionate activists was able to make broadcastings and broadcast schedules, to find out new problems and to give implementation advices. They also suggest me the idea that soma (originally a simple play-list manager) could become a programs suite, which has a player, a software for deferred broadcasting, a more user friendly admininstration, documentation and distribution.

Some time after came somaplayer and somaadmin. The player was still very behind compared to my implementation ideas. Somadmin was straight away on line and advertised on radio.inventati.org/somadmin/

In January 2004 we showed Soma at the first italian (web and air-waves) radio meeting in Naples.The meeting was technologically and politically profitable and it was an attempt to build up a real radio-network.

Radio.inventati.org was actually the only example od direct cooperation among even very different people: individuals, improvised groups, very old and movement radios and experiences from overseas countries.

On the web site there are occasional streamings, weekly streamings, and 24hrs music flows.

The object of the technical research was a digital environment, which could let individuals or whole communities gain access to a common schedule with resum?s, repetitions, deferred programs, live broadcastings, regular broadcastings as one national and international network.

Soma could satisfy this need and could be easly managed through the web thanks to somadmin, which could update the soma admin in real time.

The developments went on. Somaplayer is now reality. The only music player which can stream directly an mp3, an ogg vorbis, a wav, a track from an audio cd or a streaming directly on an icecast server (icecast 2 or shoutcast) or just play it on a computer using sound drivers or sound daemons.

At the moment more other people work at this project, who debug the software, write docs, work at the website and make installation packages (for debian).

What's New in This Release:

· This release fixes three bugs related to group permissions, the 31st of months, and an error in libsoma related to buffers and protocols.