Streamwaves Inc. was founded in 1999,[2] when Jeff Tribble and Daniel Hexter began work on a legal alternative to illegal file sharing services such as Napster and Kazaa.

The final product was a web-based streaming service that did not require users to download any software to play music or save playlists.

[10][11] Three months later, Warner Music Group became the third major label to license content to Streamwaves, which now offered over 150,000 digital songs and albums in its collection.

Subsequent deals with other labels, including Sony Music Entertainment, Harry Fox Agency, BMI and others brought the size of Streamwaves' library to over 450,000 songs and albums.

Partnering with Altnet, Streamwaves offered searchers on KaZaA free 30-second samples of songs for which they were searching and directed them to sign up for the full-featured service.