20 years of streaming radio -invented here

Jeopardy on April 20, 2004

20 years ago today, we officially announced (and made public) a special skunkworks project that we had begun in late summer 1994 here at ibiblio. We had invented, largely by cobbling together available resources in a unique way, simulcasting live radio.

We chose ground-breaking UNC station, WXYC, largely because of the good relationship that Michael Shoffner (one of the leads on the project along with David McConville) had at the time — and because, unlike say a classical station, it was difficult to determine whether the stutters and gasps of the audio flow were artifacts of the original recording or of network delay.

The whole story was written up pretty well for the 15th anniversary during which WXYC offered a music download compilation here (with broken or non-existant links to additional material).

An earlier story, on an earlier WXYC site, from the 10th anniversary has mostly working links.

Listening to radio online? Thank Michael, David, WXYC and ibiblio.

Wikipedia entry for Internet Radio (history) also has good links and a great shout out to Carl Malamud‘s great internet-only Geek of the Week radio show.