I noticed Shoutcast is hosting nearly a quarter of a million listeners. I've been watching the numbers grow for several years now, and can remember when <1,000 listeners tuned into their streaming MP3s (back when everybody was worried about Y2K). By January 2001, Shoutcast was averaging 10,000 listeners daily. They broke 20,000 six months later in July 2001. In October 2002, they broke 50,000 (see entry for 23.October). Then, in January 2004, they cracked the 100-K mark. Now they're closing in on a quarter-mil. I'd call that exponential growth. ••• continued ••• As more people subscribe to broadband connections, the number of Shoutcast listeners grows proportionately, because the higher bandwidth allows access to higher-quality streams (higher bit-rate songs). The Doc (whose FDISK guide is posted here) was the one who first turned me onto the world of MP3s and MP3-streaming. I remember asking, "Uh, what's an MP3?" [The Doc is from Germany and a German company (Fraunhofer) invented the MP3 encoder.] College kids quickly discovered the MP3 .. about the same time university dorms were being wired with Ethernet connections (file-sharing in its infancy). Then Napster came along and life seemed too good to be true. It was. The courts shut down Napster while the RIAA demanded police haul 13-year-olds off to jail and incinerate their computers. Ah, the good ol' days. Shoutcast is brought to you by Nullsoft, the same people who make Winamp (which, as you know, really whips the llama's arse). Small world. Peak listening hours seem to be between 9Am & noon (Pacific time). For more info, here is a Google search pre-configured for the query terms: streaming mp3 audio |
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