Streamwaves was an online music service founded by Jeff Tribble and Daniel Hexter in Dallas, Texas. Founded during

file sharing File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digital media, such as computer programs, multimedia (audio, images and video), documents or electronic books. Common methods of storage, transmission and dispersion include r ...

service Napster's legal troubles, Streamwaves was the first company to license major label masters for a subscription service, and the first company to launch a subscription service with major label content in 2002. In 2005 Streamwaves became part of the Rhapsody music service owned by RealNetworks.

History

Streamwaves Inc. was founded in 1999, when Jeff Tribble and Daniel Hexter began work on a legal alternative to illegal

services such as Napster and Kazaa. The final product was a web-based streaming service that did not require users to download any software to play music or save playlists. In November 2000,

EMI EMI Group Limited (originally an initialism for Electric and Musical Industries, also referred to as EMI Records Ltd. or simply EMI) was a British Transnational corporation, transnational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate founded in March 1 ...

became the first major label to license a portion of its music catalog to Streamwaves. The two companies launched a separate music service, HigherWaves, on August 13, 2001, offering 10,000 Christian songs by more than 350 musicians. It was the first label-supported music subscription service. The next major label was

Universal Music Group Universal Music Group N.V. (often abbreviated as UMG and referred to as just Universal Music) is a Dutch– American multinational music corporation under Dutch law. UMG's corporate headquarters are located in Hilversum, Netherlands and its ...

, which signed a licensing agreement with Streamwaves in June 2002. Three months later,

Warner Music Group Warner Music Group Corp. ( d.b.a. Warner Music Group, commonly abbreviated as WMG) is an American multinational entertainment and record label conglomerate headquartered in New York City. It is one of the " big three" recording companies and t ...

became the third major label to license content to Streamwaves, which now offered over 150,000 digital songs and albums in its collection. Subsequent deals with other labels, including

Sony Music Entertainment Sony Music Entertainment (SME), also known as simply Sony Music, is an American multinational music company. Being owned by the parent conglomerate Sony Group Corporation, it is part of the Sony Music Group, which is owned by Sony Entertainmen ...

Harry Fox Agency The Harry Fox Agency (HFA) is a provider of rights management and collector and distributor of mechanical license fees on behalf of music publishers in the United States. HFA has over 48,000 music publishing clients and issues the largest number ...

, BMI and others brought the size of Streamwaves' library to over 450,000 songs and albums. In 2005, the Streamwaves service was merged with the Rhapsody music service.

Compatibility

Being a browser-based service, Streamwaves did not have most of the compatibility problems other services encountered. The Streamwaves jukebox worked on

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ser ...

and

Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...

computers alike. The company lured Macintosh users and members of Mac user communities through discounts on the monthly subscription fee.

Marketing

Streamwaves marketed its service online and through traditional brick and mortar stores such as FYE and

CompUSA CompUSA was a retailer and reseller of personal computers, consumer electronics, technology products and computer services. Starting with one brick-and-mortar store in 1986 under the name Soft Warehouse, by the 1990s CompUSA had grown into a nati ...

stores, among others. Hewlett-Packard offered 30-day trials to users of its myhpclub.com and mypresarioclub.com websites. In 2003, Streamwaves took to the task of converting Kazaa users to paying, legal customers. Partnering with Altnet, Streamwaves offered searchers on KaZaA free 30-second samples of songs for which they were searching and directed them to sign up for the full-featured service. Also in 2003, Streamwaves partnered with Excite to provide a co-branded online streaming music store to Excite customers. CD3 Storage Systems, Inc. partnered with Streamwaves to offer free music on all of its Discgear products for the 2004 holiday season.

References

External links

Streamwaves

Internet Archive: Streamwaves
{{Music digital distribution platforms Online music stores of the United States

History

Compatibility

Marketing

See also

References

External links