When LAUNCHcast first started out it was unsophisticated. You could easily trick it into playing a small selection of songs over and over; it only played songs that had been rated by the user, at least that's what I had heard at the time. They got shut down over it, and when it came back it became what you see today.
At the time I only had a 56K modem that only ever connected at 40 kbps at best. The lowest bitrate stream available then was 42 kbps, so streaming radio was unlistenable with the constant pauses in the music. So I never took advantage of LAUNCHcast when it was a real jukebox type service, but I remember that month when the RIAA was high on its own power and started throwing lawsuits at everybody. After a crushing loss in the
RIAA vs. Diamond Multimedia case they started winning lawsuits, most importantly against Napster, and eventually worked up the courage to
sue all the world in '03 and then in '05 take on Grokster in the Supreme Court. It wouldn't be such a big deal that Napster is giving away free music if it weren't for these court cases.