Adding the SomaFM XBMC Plugin to OpenELEC

I am a huge fan of SomaFM. I Have been listening to this listener-supported, commercial-free Internet-only streaming music station for years.

I do no only use my xbmc on Raspberry Pi (OpenElec) to watch movies, I regularly listen to music as well. So how can we add the wonderful ambient, jazz, loungy or indie tunes of SomaFM to xbmc? A quick search pointed to https://github.com/nils-werner/xbmc-somafm, but my OpenELEC lacked the git command.

Reluctant to install git on OpenELEC just for this, I performed this workaround

  • I first installed git with the default package manager on my Linux Destop (Synaptic on Debian)
  • Following the instruction in https://github.com/nils-werner/xbmc-somafm/blob/master/README.md, I downloaded the plugin with git to my desktop:
    git clone https://github.com/nils-werner/xbmc-somafm.git plugin.audio.somafm
  • I then archived and compressed the folder:
    tar cvzf plugin.audio.somafm.tgz plugin.audio.somafm
  • Transfered the .tgz file to the OpenELEC:
    scp plugin.audio.somafm.tgz root@openelec:/storage/.xbmc/addons/
  • Then logged in with ssh to the OpenELEC, and extracted the .tgz:
    cd /storage/.xbmc/addons/
    tar xvzf plugin.audio.somafm.tgz
    rm plugin.audio.somafm.tgz
    chown -R root:root plugin.audio.somafm/
  • After rebooting your OpenELEC you can find SomaFM under Music > Add-ons

Happy listening!

3 thoughts on “Adding the SomaFM XBMC Plugin to OpenELEC

  1. Thank you very much for sharing this, I am an avid listner and supporter of SFM and listen to it daily and now thanks to you nightly as well 🙂

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *