Glenn Rubenstein's Online Radio Venture (Circa 1999) in the Village Voice

Long before the days of Glenn Rubenstein on BreeFM or even Glenn Rubenstein's work on LonelyGirl15, I was an early fan of the Shoutcast plug-in for WinAmp. Much like I did with Hyphenated Radio back in the day, I still use Shoutcast through WinAmp for my weekly radio show on BreeFM (Wednesdays at 8PM Pacific).

Being one of the first people to launch a dedicated a Shoutcast station, I had a fair amount of success in finding an audience with Hyphenated Radio. We also got some solid press coverage as a result. Unfortunately, the idea proved to be a little too ahead of its time, as licensing issues were not yet in place.

Not knowing what the cost would ultimately be, it was impossible to close any of our talks with investors. Meanwhile, the attention we received caused bandwidth spikes that overloaded my personal connection, and at the time, the lack of clear-cut and legal regulations for music-licensing online made it nearly impossible to obtain a dedicated hosting server for purposes of streaming music online. This also killed any opportunity we had to sell advertising, unless we shifted to a "talk only" format, which would have limited our audience at the time.

That beind said, reading this article about my online radio venture, which appeared in The Village Voice back in February of 1999, definitely brings back memories...

Adventures in Hi-Fi:
Digital Kills the Radio Star
by Austin Bunn

Hyphenated is fronted by Glenn Rubenstein, a 22-year-old journalist who once cohosted a nationally syndicated radio show called On Computers. On SHOUTcast, Rubenstein serves up 10 hours of programming in an unlikely mix of Bel Biv DeVoe, Everclear, and rambling talk— what Rubenstein calls "Format X." Rubenstein runs his show off his Pentium 400 and a cable modem...

Glenn Rubenstein's Adventures in Hi-Fi at the Village Voice

File Under: Blast from the Past