[AUDIO] Is Shoutcast Shutting Down

I listen to a lot of music on Shoutcast and with Winamp shutting down I am worried that Shoutcast will be going away.

Can anyone tell me What the deal with Shoutcast is?

Also what will happen to all those people on Shoutcast Servers?

Leo mentioned on last week's TWiT that Shoutcast was also shutting down, but it seems rather difficult to find a definitive answer other than the statement:

Quote:

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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.

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One could presume that "associated web services" means Shoutcast. Even if Shoutcast.com were to shut down, I don't see any reason why Shoutcast servers would have to go. Shoutcast.com is really nothing more than a directory of active Shoutcast streams. Besides, IMHO, Icecast is a better audio streaming server so there will always be alternatives.

The latest info is that AOL is in talks with Microsoft to sell Winamp and Shoutcast. That could be interesting, I suppose.

We stream live on two different SHOUTcast stations. The day I saw the news about Winamp's shutdown one of the stations announced they were closing up shop on December 1st. They sighted a loss of key staff people, so it might be unrelated.

The other station uses Wavestreaming.com, which is built on SHOUTcast infrastructure. Their blog notes the following:

"At present we don’t currently know if this affects SHOUTcast and what AOL’s future is for the platform. We wish to remind people that there is much speculation online, however, it is just that – speculation. Microsoft are in talks with AOL for a buyout, which could make the future very bright for SHOUTcast."

and

"All Wavestreaming services will continue operating as normal and there will not be any interruption to service. We would like to note that Wavestreaming is an online radio provider, building new and easy to use tools to get up and broadcasting on the web, no matter what the platform."

So I don't know. I was trying to find an answer to this myself. I was using them as a sort of barometer as to whether SHOUTcast is shutting down or not. I can't imagine with 50,000+ stations on SHOUTcast that they'll just pull the plug. If they do, perhaps Microsoft will save the day?