IndustryOctober 16, 20268 min read

The History of Internet Radio and Its State in 2026

Internet radio began with a 1993 talk show on the early web and grew through royalty battles, smartphones, and smart speakers. Here is the sourced history, and where online radio stands in 2026.

Written byice Radio FM

From 1993 experiment to everyday listening

Internet radio is easy to take for granted now. You open a browser or an app, tap a station on the other side of the planet, and music starts. Behind that tap stands more than three decades of engineering, licensing fights, and lucky timing on hardware.

The scale of what grew from those experiments is visible in the latest listening surveys. In 2025, about 79 percent of Americans aged 12 and older, roughly 228 million people, listened to online audio at least monthly, and 73 percent did so weekly. The story of how that happened is worth knowing.

The first webcasts: 1993 to 1995

The medium predates the web browser most people remember. In 1993, Carl Malamud launched Internet Talk Radio, a weekly interview show distributed as downloadable audio files and picked up by stations, one of the first regular efforts to treat the internet as a broadcasting medium.

That same summer, on June 24, 1993, the band Severe Tire Damage performed a full concert that was broadcast live over the internet from a Xerox facility in California, widely credited as the first internet concert. Radio stations took longer to join in, but the pattern was set.

The milestones came quickly after that. On November 7, 1994, WXYC, the student station of the University of North Carolina, became the first traditional radio station to simulcast its signal online. In February 1995, Radio HK in Hong Kong signed on as the first full-time internet-only station, a record recognized by Guinness World Records. A few months later, in April 1995, the launch of the RealAudio player gave ordinary listeners a live streaming client that actually worked on a modem.

The dial-up years: players, formats, and a missed turn

For the rest of the decade, listening meant dial-up modems, scratchy streams, and competing players. RealAudio, Windows Media Audio, QuickTime, and Winamp each played files in their own formats, and a single station might have to encode for several of them. A typical listener on a 56k modem had little bandwidth to spare, and buffering was a normal part of the experience.

Still, adoption grew. Virgin Radio of the UK became the first European station to broadcast a full 24-hour schedule online in 1996, and by 1998 streaming radio had a real audience in the hundreds of thousands. Hardware appeared too: Kerbango, an AM-FM and internet radio receiver announced in 2000, looked like the future until its maker ran out of money and canceled the product the following year. The lesson, learned the hard way, was that internet radio would ride on computers and later phones, not dedicated devices.

The DMCA gives webcasting a legal shape

As streaming spread, the law caught up. In October 1998 the United States Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which the Copyright Office summarizes as implementing treaties and providing limits on online service provider liability. For radio, the key piece was a new statutory license for webcasting of sound recordings, created in section 114 of the Copyright Act, with a complementary ephemeral recording license in section 112.

That license placed internet radio under a set of obligations that traditional AM and FM broadcasters in the United States did not share. Over-the-air broadcasters paid royalties for the musical work but, until later law changes, not for the sound recording. Internet radio, under the DMCA, owed royalties for both layers of every song it played.

Other countries took their own paths, and they still do. The general principle everywhere is that webcasting music publicly requires permission or a license from whoever controls the rights. The United States simply codified it early and visibly.

The royalty wars: 2000 to 2010

A license is only as good as its rates, and that is where the fights began. SoundExchange, the organization that administers the statutory license for sound recordings in the United States, was formed in the fall of 2000. Rates took time to settle. When they were finally set in 2002, small webcasters warned that the new per-play fees could kill their stations, and the next round of the fight was already on the way.

The loudest battle came in 2007, when the Copyright Royalty Board set new per-performance royalty rates that small webcasters said would put them out of business. The SaveNetRadio coalition organized a Day of Silence on June 26, 2007, when services including Pandora, Live365, MTV, Digitally Imported, and SHOUTcast went quiet or darkened their player pages in protest.

The fight eventually produced a compromise. The Webcaster Settlement Acts of 2008 and 2009 let small webcasters settle at revenue-based royalty rates instead of the per-performance rates they had protested. When that arrangement expired in 2016, the Copyright Royalty Board set a minimum fee, and the terms for small stations tightened again. The whole decade is a reminder that the streams listeners hear for free sit on top of an elaborate licensing system, and that rules differ by country and change over time.

Smartphones and smart speakers make listening ambient

The real growth came when internet radio stopped being a desktop activity. Apple introduced the iPhone in June 2007, and by the spring of 2010 about 14 percent of Americans owned a smartphone. By 2012, internet radio accounted for nearly a quarter of the average weekly music listening time among consumers aged 13 to 35 in the United States, according to industry research cited in histories of the medium.

In November 2014, Amazon shipped the Echo, the first smart speaker with a voice assistant, and it arrived with radio built in: NPR was a default Flash Briefing source from day one. By January 2018, 16 percent of Americans owned a smart speaker, and 71 percent of owners said they were listening to more audio because of it. By 2020, ownership had reached about 24 percent of US adults, a market of roughly 60 million people.

The effect was to make radio ambient again. Stations became something you ask for while cooking, like asking a receiver to tune itself, only the receiver was now a speaker in the kitchen.

Public and community broadcasters found their place online

Internet radio was never only commercial. Public radio in the United States is built on a network of local stations, close to 700 of them mostly licensed to local organizations, as a chapter on public radio and the internet for the Food and Agriculture Organization documented. Those stations stream their signals independently, which means a listener in another country can hear the local station that matters to them.

Community radio moved online for a different reason: frequencies are scarce. In Portugal, researchers studying community radio found that new community stations were launching exclusively online, with a wave of online-only entries between 2018 and 2021, reaching audiences without an FM license at all. Around the world, the internet lowered the barrier to entry. In the United States, unlike over-the-air broadcasting, an FCC license is not required to operate an internet-only radio service.

Internet radio in 2026: a mainstream medium

The surveys keep pointing one direction. Online audio use keeps reaching new records, and the 2025 Infinite Dial report from Edison Research put monthly online listening at 79 percent of Americans 12 and older, with weekly listening at 73 percent. Smartphones are the dominant device, and streaming in the car has become standard practice.

The shift is global. In Australia, online radio listening among adults aged 25 to 54 nearly doubled between 2021 and 2024, from 15 percent to 31 percent, according to research reported by the country's commercial radio industry body. Broadcast radio remains the single most-used audio platform in many markets, but the balance has moved decisively toward streams.

Directories track the same growth. ice Radio FM alone indexes more than 66,000 live stations from 229 countries at the time of writing, which is a useful reminder of what the medium became: not a replacement for broadcast radio but a parallel one, with its own genres, its own niche communities, and its own licensing rules, all reachable from a browser.

What the history of internet radio tells us

The story of internet radio is not a smooth line from 1993 to today. It is a series of collisions between an open technology and the economics of music rights, resolved each time by new rules and new compromises.

For listeners, the practical lessons are simple. Streams are linked and licensed, not warehoused, so a station's own terms decide where and how it can be heard. Rules vary by country and change over time. And the medium is now so woven into phones, cars, and speakers that the old distinction between radio and the internet has quietly disappeared.

Internet radio took off when listening moved off the desktop and into phones and smart speakers.
Licensing battles shaped which stations survive and where streams are available.
Public and community stations gained global reach online without needing new frequencies.
A directory links to broadcaster streams; it does not host music, and licensing obligations belong to the broadcaster and differ by country.
Online audio is now a mainstream habit: 79 percent of Americans aged 12 and older listened monthly in 2025.

Frequently Asked Questions

When was the first internet radio station?

Radio HK in Hong Kong began broadcasting full-time on the internet in February 1995 and is recognized by Guinness World Records as the first internet radio station. Before that, talk programs like Internet Talk Radio in 1993 and the first simulcast of a traditional station, WXYC, on November 7, 1994, had already tested the idea.

Who invented internet radio?

There is no single inventor. Carl Malamud's Internet Talk Radio in 1993 is often cited as the first regular internet broadcasting effort, and the band Severe Tire Damage played the first internet concert in June 1993. Radio stations like WXYC and Internet-only services like Radio HK then turned the idea into a medium.

Do internet radio stations pay royalties?

In most markets, yes. In the United States, webcasting music generally requires royalties for both the musical work and the sound recording, collected through performing rights organizations and SoundExchange. Rules differ by country and have changed several times, most dramatically after the rate disputes of 2007.

How many people listen to internet radio today?

In the United States, 79 percent of people aged 12 and older listened to online audio in 2025, roughly 228 million people, with 73 percent listening weekly, according to Edison Research's Infinite Dial report. Smartphones and smart speakers are the most common ways to listen.

What was the first smart speaker with radio built in?

The Amazon Echo, launched in November 2014, was the first mass-market smart speaker with a voice assistant, and it launched with radio as a default source, including NPR as the default Flash Briefing. By January 2018, 16 percent of Americans owned a smart speaker.

Is internet radio still growing in 2026?

Yes. Online audio listening keeps setting records in surveys, and growth is visible beyond the United States, for example in Australia, where online radio listening among adults aged 25 to 54 nearly doubled between 2021 and 2024. Broadcast radio remains strong, but streams now reach a majority of listeners.