Live365: Giving Radio an Attitude Adjustment

In the fall of 1998, Nanocosm, Inc. was in the process of engineering a Geocities-style homepage publishing system for 3D environments called "Nanohomes." By the spring of 1999, the venture had spawned Internet radio broadcaster Live365.

Say what?While the company hedged its bets on the Nanohome model, a renegade project was underway within the company, spearheaded by Nanocosm engineers with a deep passion for music. With the CEO’s blessing, this startup within a startup, known as Live365.com, was soft-launched in June 1999 after just two months of development among five or six employees.

The first incarnation of Live365, as it remains in part, allowed anyone with Internet access and readily available MP3 encoding tools to broadcast live radio using Nanocosm’s infrastructure. By tying together a series of Nullsoft’s (AOL’s) Winamp-based distributed MP3 streaming audio system, known as SHOUTcast, and a crude Web interface, a new business model took shape. The concept of a community-based environment would remain paramount for Nanocosm, but it would no longer be in 3D.

Although the Nanohome model was still alive and floundering, the Live365 service was hard-launched in July of 1999 and has since grown to host more than 30,000 radio stations while fostering numerous partnerships and services.

At the end of 2000, Arbitron reported 1.3 million streaming hours for the month of December alone by Live365. Live365 claims to have doubled its listenership since January of this year, and that’s music to the company’s ears.

Needless to say, Nanohome.com’s Web site has simply become a doormat for Web surfers to enter Live365. Here’s how they’ve done it, from the technical perspective.

Tiers of Service

At the consumer level, Live365 offers members up to 365MB of storage for streaming MP3 broadcasts (at a maximum of 56Kbps) to a limited audience via the "Studio365" tool. The service is free with the agreement that Live365 can insert pre-roll and in-stream advertisements with its proprietary Ad Insertion Server.

"It’s proprietary in the sense that we built it ourselves, but not necessarily in the sense that we plan to keep it secret," says Rothman. "We might work with others and make it work with other systems, or license it to other parties."

For DJs in the making, "Studio365-Live 2.0" allows real-time control over the broadcast from the desktop. Users can add live voice-overs, import Winamp playlists and keep thorough logs of their broadcasts.

The "Broadcast365" service constitutes the next tier and targets organizations by offering basic and premium service, private-label radio packages. The concept is more or less the same as the consumer-based model, but provides lots of bells and whistles depending on the goals of the customer. Customizations can include increased listenership allowances, branded players, higher bit-rate MP3 streams and specialized e-commerce integration.