this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2024
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His dotcom-era company was a “radio on the internet” website (this was actually parodied in HBO’s Silicon Valley). As you’ve probably noticed, no one listens to radio on the internet because the entire point of radio is that it can be accessed by anyone with a radio signal, which is much easier to obtain than an internet connection and more importantly is free.
He then sold this doomed company to Yahoo. But not only that, he actually shorted the Yahoo stock that he received in compensation because he knew that his company was vaporware and as a result he got paid twice (once for the sale and then later because Yahoo shares tanked when they had to entirely write off his acquired company, among other dumb investments they made).
That’s not a scam, that’s just typical dotcom era stupidity. It’s probably the most egregious example and he saw the stupid Yahoo stock valuations and hedged his investment.
I’m not making apologies for billionaires but calling that a scam is stretching it. And, Internet radio was and still is a thing. I listen to stations that I can’t get on a regular radio or where I don’t have a radio.
Now, whether the current company is worthless, I can’t say.
Semantically it might not be a literal scam, but at best it was a bad faith transaction given that he literally bet on his company failing as soon as he sold it.
And internet radio might still exist today, but from a business perspective it’s basically a non-factor in terms of revenue when compared to any other form of music streaming or podcast distribution network. And more importantly, internet radio today can be created directly by each given station, e.g. Sirius can make their own website to host their shows. Mark Cuban’s Broadcast.com was supposed to be a centralized hub for all radio stations. But why would any station host there if they can just make their own website and cut out the middleman?
All of this is to say that Cuban is either a poor businessman, a shady one, or both. And I don’t think it bodes well for the would-be consumers of his new pharmaceutical company.
It's possible he knew more about yahoos future rather then specifically about his particular product being bad.
Internet radio was absolutely a thing, think iheartradio, it's fucking massive now, sure their main business isn't internet radio anymore, but it's not like there was absolutely nothing of value there.
For "every station can just make their own site" sure, but look at the state of streaming services to see how that ends up panning out. Not to mention the difficulty and ongoing costs associated with that, especially back then, much less plug and play stuff.
Not saying I support Cuban, he's definitely part of the class that constantly exploits us, just had some specific critiques lol.
I actually hadn’t heard of iheartradio before, but after checking it out, it seems like as you mentioned it’s as much a podcasting/music streaming site as it is a radio network. And even then, it looks like it’s the biggest “internet radio” company in the US with a market cap of $250 million. Mark Cuban’s internet radio company was sold for $5.7 billion in 1999… which would be over $10 billion today. So I’m standing by my original statement that he absolutely fleeced Yahoo.
In 2021 at its height it was valued at almost 5b, yeah it's nose dived a LOT.
I didn't know how much broadcast.com was bought for tho, that is pretty nuts.
Why is that so bad? Back in the dialup era, one of the first things I did on the internet was search for radio stations that were impossibly beyond my horizon, things like KCRW, WFMU and the BBC, by searching for the station's website and clicking on the "listen live" link that opened either the Real Player or Windows Media Player program.
Then there was TuneIn, by then my list of stations had expanded to include KFJC (Bay Area college radio station), KEXP (public station from Seattle), Radio Nova (electronic/soul station from France).
Nowadays, the MyTuner app might be the one I use most often than any other cellphone app except for the messaging one. Now I've included WPRB (Princeton), KALX (Berkeley), Soho Radio (London) and NTS Radio (also London) to my list of favorites.
My point is that radio on the internet, in one form or another, has been an integral part of my daily internet experience since basically Day One.
The concept is fine, and I’m not begrudging people who use it. But purely from a financial perspective it’s not worth anywhere close to what Cuban sold it for ($5.7 billion in 1999 for a single company that had effectively no revenue by comparison). From my other comment - the biggest US internet radio company has a market cap of $250 million today and that number has pretty much only gone down.
Jeezus...! There does seem to be a sucker born every minute, even at the Harvard Business School, CEO-level. I wonder if those who green-lit the purchase were probably on the older side, with money to burn and overwhelmed by the technical jargon, none willing to admit the king had no clothes?
But what if we sold them A.I.-powered, bespoke NFT radio, on the blockchain?