Back in the day, when AOL was buying up Netscape and everything Internet related to battle Mucrosoft, Shoutcast was one of their acquisitions, much to the dismay of the people who worked there.
After initially losing the key people responsible for creating Winamp, AOL eventually worked out an arrangement to let Winamp operate independently and development of the product resumed. Shoutcast is the “run your own radio station” service.
Streams designed for Winamp end in .pls – the Shoutcast playlist format. While the underlying streaming format is the same, Microsoft has never supported .pls streams. There has been a lot of bad blood between AOL and Microsoft – MSFT supports the more standard .m3u playlist format in addition to its proprietary .asx format used by Windows Media Player.
AOL is a mere shell of the company that rode the crest of the Internet bubble of the 1990s. Bob Pittman, the professional manager who took the reins from Steve Case now runs Clear Channel.
Winamp and Shoutcast are being spun off to a similar service based in Belgium. Relatively little radio streaming uses the format any more, in part because of a patent held by a European company on the MP3 technology.
They fared better than Netscape under AOL leadership. It will be interesting to see if they can find a market and survive. It will take some big changes for that the happen.
I don’t follow this really closely, but I think for people running “stations” under Shoutcast, there is a break on the royalties that have to be paid to SoundExchange.
I don’t really see the business model for a “station” playing random songs for 3 listeners – and “manning” your “station” live with 5 listeners. Music alone is not enough to draw an audience on the Internet. You need naked chicks showing their boobs.
oh come on, you can’t leave them dangling out there without giving us a link!
😉
http://m.cnet.com/news/winamp-could-start-the-new-year-with-a-new-owner/57616455