StreamGuys RevenueStream Subscription Service Launches Strong Revenue Model for Whisperings Internet Radio

Posted in Announcement, Partners on Oct 08, 2008

BAYSIDE, CALIFORNIA, October 8, 2008 – StreamGuys, Inc., a streaming media and content delivery provider based in northern California, announces that Whisperings, an Internet Radio broadcast founded by pianist and composer David Nevue, is successfully using StreamGuys’ new RevenueStream subscription platform to generate revenue for its premium online radio outlet. StreamGuys’ RevenueStream service has enabled Whisperings, an Internet Radio broadcast that exclusively features solo piano music, to become entirely listener supported. The service has allowed Nevue and his team to increase revenue and defray operating costs. Whisperings “PureStream” is the second Internet Radio outlet launched by Nevue, accessible at SoloPianoRadio.com. It is the subscription-based, commercial-free version of his first Internet Radio broadcast, “Whisperings: Solo Piano Radio”, which remains a free service. PureStream offers an expanded playlist in CD-quality format with no commercial interruptions. Both services, managed and delivered by StreamGuys, present performances by more than 150 accomplished solo piano artists.

Nevue launched Whisperings Solo Piano Radio as a means to promote his own music in 2003 with an initial capacity of 25 simultaneous listeners or audio streams, incurring bandwidth costs of roughly $25 per month. An immediate hit, the service quickly expanded to more than one thousand simultaneous listeners, with bandwidth costs rising exponentially. In the early days, Nevue and other Whisperings pianists shouldered all of the operating costs.

“We hit a financial brick wall,” said Nevue. “There was a huge demand for our broadcast, but the cost required to support more than one thousand simultaneous listeners was beyond what the artists supporting the broadcast could afford. We couldn’t afford more bandwidth, and we weren’t anywhere near fulfilling the demand. I knew the only way to support the growing demand was to figure out a way to make Whisperings: Solo Piano Radio fully listener-supported. The effort to solve that problem led us to StreamGuys, which helped us launch the PureStream subscription service. With their help, we have been able to serve five times as many listeners while drastically reducing our operating costs.”

The new StreamGuys RevenueStream service allows broadcasters and service providers to monetize programming over the web in lieu of or to supplement an ad-supported model, delivering first-rate content at premium quality. RevenueStream is based on a robust server architecture that enables StreamGuys customers to offer subscriptions, billing and control access for online audio services.

Since utilizing RevenueStream, subscriber revenue from the Whisperings PureStream service has defrayed bandwidth costs and allowed Whisperings to grow its aggregate audience by 500 percent to more than five thousand simultaneous listeners, which equates to about 50,000 streams each day. The robust server architecture built by StreamGuys allowed Whisperings to support its growing audience and promote its artists’ music to listeners who otherwise would have never heard the music.

“Whisperings was completely listener-supported within five months of launching PureStream as a subscription-based Internet Radio broadcast using RevenueStream,” said Nevue. “And because of that revenue, my fellow artists and I no longer had to financially support the broadcast. The fans of the broadcast are now supporting the broadcast. Overall, we’re seeing more than one million streams launched each month, and our global audience continues to grow.”

The RevenueStream platform also allows StreamGuys to enable secure, password-protected subscription controls and conditional access for both new and existing streams using PayPal, the popular third-party online payment service; and its own efficient, scalable server infrastructure. StreamGuys currently supports Windows Media audio/video, Icecast mp3 audio and QuickTime, with Wowza-enabled Flash audio and video in the works. Content providers can encode media by remotely accessing software in the StreamGuys server architecture.

“StreamGuys has been extremely helpful since the beginning, offering exceptional support and easy-touse, Web-based tools for encoding and managing our program content,” said Nevue.

Whisperings PureStream is cross-promoted during commercial breaks on the free Whisperings Solo Piano Radio broadcast and its related pages. As the audience grows, Nevue says he’s also seen an increase in revenue resulting from the online sale of his own CDs, digital downloads and sheet music for his original piano compositions, most of which are featured on the Whisperings broadcast. Nevue quit his day job in 2001 to promote his music full-time on the Internet, a process documented in his book, “How to Promote Your Music Successfully on the Internet,” available at www.PromoteYourMusic.com.


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