Dear Clients,
We’d like to wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving! May you all eat excessive amounts of turkey and spend some quality time with your families being thankful for all that you have.
Regards,
Breck Burgess
NexusCast Ltd.
A few days ago, AOL released the news that it was in the process of shutting down Winamp, the very popular media playing software for Windows that dominated most of the 90’s. Originally developed by Nullsoft, Winamp became a part of AOL through an 80 million dollar acquisition in 1999. Along with Winamp, AOL also got the rights to streaming media service SHOUTcast, another Nullsoft product. Recently it came to the light that AOL is negotiating with Microsoft in order to sell off Winamp and SHOUTcast. It has also been revealed that AOL is likely to announce the end of SHOUTcast by next week.
Neither AOL nor Microsoft has opened their mouths regarding this news but we are assuming that the deal has not been struck yet. Probably the parties are still trying to arrive at a suitable price. AOL’s intentions about SHOUTcast are largely unclear at this point but it might be a last ditch effort to save both the platforms at the same time.
AOL has not been able to evolve Winamp and SHOUTcast to become key players in the digital music industry. Some may attribute this failure to the cutthroat competition in the market but this could also very well be due to AOL’s shift in focus towards web publishing and rich-media advertising. It has been apparent for the last few years that this tech giant is concentrating all its resources towards development in these niches.
Currently AOL owns many popular blogs such as Huffington Post, Engadget and TechCrunch. It is also extensively working on improving advertisement technology while acting as a network operator between its own and other third party websites.
While AOL never invested the time and money to utilize the properties of Winamp and SHOUTcast in their ventures, software giant Microsoft has had its own bitter experiences in the music industry too. We all remember the failure of Zune. They are now trying to turn things around with XBOX Music which is supported by almost all major platforms such as iOS, Android, Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, Windows RT and of course XBOX 360. Unlike its predecessor, it is a free ad-supported platform that allows streaming and downloaded music and also subscriptions.
SHOUTcast acts as a portal to more than 50,000 radio stations hence it can be a welcome addition to XBOX Music. It currently does not have a feature that can exploit the Pandora-like personal radio experience. SHOUTcast can give it that necessary edge but what Microsoft will do with Winamp is still unclear. Winamp’s compatibility with Android might open up some avenues towards turning it into add on music player for latest smartphones and tablets.
Winamp, purchased by AOL in 1999, is set to shut down on December 20th, 2013. According to a post that went live Wednesday at 12:00pm ET on the Winamp website:
“Winamp.com and associated Web services will no longer be available past December 20, 2013. Additionally, Winamp Media players will no longer be available for download. Please download the latest version before that date. See release notes for latest improvements to this last release. Thanks for supporting the Winamp community for over 15 years.”
We do expect this to shut down both the Winamp and SHOUTcast websites, including the directory. However, it will not stop you from using the SHOUTcast/Winamp software itself. We will upload copies of the software to our website for the public to download. In addition to the loss of the SHOUTcast directory, we will be working on alternative directories and/or scripts for our clients to promote their radio stations in.
NexusCast currently has the ability to host SHOUTcast v1, v2, and Icecast streams. In addition to the news from Winamp/AOL, we will also be adding Windows Media stream hosting in the coming month.
Regards,
NexusCast Staff
http://www.nexuscast.com/
Dear Clients,
I’m happy to announce the SC9/S5 server has been migrated to Centova 3.0.5 successfully. If there are any issues that arise, please let us know. Enjoy the new update!
Regards,
NexusCast Ltd.
http://www.nexuscast.com/
Dear Clients,
This Saturday morning from 1:00 AM to 4:00 AM CST, we will be upgrading sc9.mystreamserver.com to the latest version of Centova 3. This is a major upgrade from Centova 2.0. In addition to the upgrade, we will be renaming sc9.mystreamserver.com to be s5.nexuscast.com. No listen links or anything on the user end will need to be changed, they will all work with the new address.
We have the new servers in place and active, so there will just be a restart of the servers and a few minutes of downtime while we switch to the new control panel. I hope you enjoy the new release of Centova!
Regards,
NexusCast Ltd.
http://www.nexuscast.com/
Dear Clients,
I’m happy to announce the S3 and S4 servers have been migrated to Centova 3.0.5 successfully. If there are any issues that arise, please let us know. Enjoy the new update!
Regards,
NexusCast Ltd.
http://www.nexuscast.com/
Posted by NexusCast in NexusCast 
Comments Off on S3 and S4 Maintenance Notification – November 14th Dear Clients,
We will be upgrading both S3 and S4 servers to Centova 3.0.5 tomorrow morning (Nov 14th) between 1:00AM to 3:00AM Central Time. This is a major upgrade from Centova 2.0. We have the new servers in place and active, so there will just be a simple restart of the servers and everything will be activated on the new version. No listen link addresses will change. I hope you enjoy the new release of Centova!
Regards,
NexusCast Ltd.
http://www.nexuscast.com/