Created in 1998, SHOUTcast's streaming protocol uses metadata tags and responses that all start with ICY, which stands for "I Can Yell." Nullsoft was purchased by AOL on June 1, 1999.
On January 14, 2014, AOL sold Nullsoft to Belgian online radio aggregator Radionomy; no financial details were publicly announced.
Icecast is a streaming media project released as free software maintained by the Xiph.org Foundation.
It also refers specifically to the server program which is part of the project.
Icecast was created in December 1998/January 1999 by Jack Moffitt and Barath Raghavan to provide an open-source audio streaming server that anyone could modify, use, and tinker with. Version 2, a ground-up rewrite aimed at multi-format support (initially targeting Ogg Vorbis) and scalability, was started in 2001 and released in January 2004