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

Glenn Rubenstein - Multimedia wunderkind?

Looking back on it now, I guess I really did do a fair amount of stuff for both TechTV and G4. From one of my appearances:

"Multimedia wunderkind Glenn Rubenstein came by the show today to give us the scoop on MP3s. Not only has Rubenstein transferred his CD collection to MP3, he distributes recordings of his band in MP3 and has even created an MP3 car stereo!"

Read the rest of TechTV's Intro to MP3 Technology (circa 1999), featuring yours truly:

Glenn Rubenstein and MP3 101: Turn Your PC Into a Jukebox

File Under: Blast from the Past

Headboard: 7 Years of Indie Hi-Fi High-Tech Hip-Pop

Before we had even played our first concert, in the winter of 1995, my band, Headboard, had a Web site. Back then, music on the Internet was uncharted territory; there was no MP3, and not every musical act from wannabe rock gods to your local accordion quartet had a flash-laden site. In fact, personal home pages were still sort of a novelty. To the outside world, the site looked as good as those of the handful of major-label groups that had them at the time, and Headboard vaguely resembled a "real band," rather than the group of suburban misfits in a garage that we were. Little did I know that in the end, the Internet would be the key to the bands "almost famous" status — pushing the songwriting, touring and hard work to a happy level somewhere above obscurity, but well below superstardom.

- Glenn Rubenstein

Read More at eWeek.com:
Glenn Rubenstein - "Headboard: Almost Famous"

File Under: Blast from the Past & Articles Written by Glenn Rubenstein