AOL reportedly sells Winamp, Shoutcast to online radio aggregator Radionomy

Shawn Knight

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aol sells winamp shoutcast music services online radio aggregator radionomy aol winamp shoutcast

Iconic media player Winamp and streaming media service Shoutcast will indeed live to see another day. AOL has sold the two properties to Radionomy, an international aggregator of online radio stations based in Brussels, Belgium, according to sources as reported by TechCrunch.

The two properties were scheduled to be discontinued on December 21 but when that date came and went without any change, people began to suspect something was going on behind the scenes. Eddy Richman from the Winamp team said he couldn’t comment on the matter at the time but said something was obviously going on.

Initial rumors from a month earlier suggested Microsoft was interested in purchasing the IP but that never came to pass.

Winamp’s nameservers have already been transferred to the new owner. The nameservers for Shoutcast are still in the possession of AOL as of writing. That could indicate that Radionomy only purchased Winamp or that the Shoutcast transition simply hasn’t happened yet but considering the TechCrunch report, the latter scenario seems most likely.

Radionomy is a free platform that can be used to create, discover and listen to radio stations over the Internet. The company, which boasts more than 6,000 online stations, helps producers create, broadcast and monetize their stations for free.

The deal is expected to be finalized by Friday at the latest, we’re told. We’ll keep an eye open for anything official from AOL or Radionomy in the interim.

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Radionomy inserts its own ads into all its streams. They only share revenue with those stations that have a minimum number or listeners over a set time period. Furthermore, if you don't hit those numbers you also get to PAY for them rebroadcasting your stream. So if you're a typical small-time streamer you'll probably end up paying Radionomy for the privilege of providing them with ad revenue. This pretty much guarantees that Shoutcast development will halt and Shoutcast listening will be removed from Winamp (and probably replaced with Radionomy).
 
This pretty much guarantees that Shoutcast development will halt and Shoutcast listening will be removed from Winamp (and probably replaced with Radionomy).
That in my opinion would defeat the purpose of buying Shoutcast. It must have been a package deal, when all they wanted was WinAmp.
 
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