Not very good

Update: Re: Apple TV 4 compatibility …

The Soma FM Apple TV app is mediocre just like the others, but also has a giant (and rather fatal) flaw. Apple TV apparently doesn’t know it’s playing and so after 15, 30 or whatever minutes you have the sleep or screen saver set to … The TV turns itself off and Soma FM with it. The developers need to set the flag that Apple TV needs so as not to fall asleep when Soma FM is playing. Especially now since “sleep” means “turn off TV and entire stereo system.”

I love SomaFM and really wanted to like this app but its just no good. Stations mysteriously drop, and stations quickly crash or drop with pretty much 100% reliability when you move from a Wi-Fi area to a cell network.

This means if you put the radio on, and then leave the house for the day, it will crash as soon as you get 30 metres or so from your house. So you have to pull your iPhone out (in the rain), and try to reconnect etc. If you move in and out of Wi-Fi areas all day as I do this quickly gets infuriating.

Im also extremely disappointed that as an owner of the first SomaFM app (that I *paid* for and which was incapable of backgrounding), that this new app was released which *does* do backgrounding, is free, and which the paid users were never made aware of. Why the new app isnt an upgrade of the old I have no idea. Why the users of the first paid app were not apprised of the existence of the new one is similarly a mystery.

Im a big supporter of SomaFM and would likely have paid even for this new app, but the developers are (seemingly), amateurs and the whole business is rather distasteful. An app for SomaFM that worked and was rationally and attractively done would be fabulous, but its starting to look like they just arent capable of getting their act together.

Jeremy Bee about SomaFM Radio Player, v1.6.9