Internet radio in the ‘90s and early 2000s was wild—super ahead of its time and kind of a hidden gem. RealAudio kicked things off in 1995, letting people stream audio online when most were still on dial-up. It wasn’t pretty—low bitrate, buffering nonstop—but it worked. Then came Shoutcast in ‘98, which let anyone with a PC and some MP3s run their own station. You had niche DJs, underground music, weird talk shows—it was the Wild West of streaming. By the early 2000s, services like Live365 and even early iTunes radio started organizing it, but the whole vibe was still DIY and raw. If you were into internet radio back then, you weren’t just a listener—you were part of a scene that existed way before Spotify made it mainstream.