Six years ago this week, San Fran psychedelic roots jam band Moonalice began live satellite broadcasts using HTML5. What began with iPads and iPhones streaming without an app has now extended to Android, PC, you name it. “The system is surprisingly inexpensive,” Moonalice front man and founder Roger McNamee commented at the time. “We paid a guy to write an HTML5 API and we found a carrier willing to provide bandwidth and storage at cost. The satellite system offers more bandwidth than alternatives at the same price.”

Why the broadcasts? “People couldn’t have cared less about Moonalice, so we had to use technology just to get off the ground. We figured out Twitter, Facebook, live streaming. It’s not that nobody had ever done it, but nobody had ever been dependent on it the way we were. Instead of a manager or publicist, we spent money on technology and social media. Technology was a lot cheaper and we have built a whole community was around this,” Roger elaborated.

“Moonalice is more like a tribute to a style of show,” Roger explained. “That communal, artistic, very hippie-driven model we grew up with. Technology allowed us to do it. Before buying a ticket or an album, fans could listen to our music online and decide if they liked it. I don’t understand why younger bands aren’t aggressive around this. If your audience was 18-25, this would work 100 times better than it does for us."