The Silverlight Streaming FAQ says: "As we move out of beta, unlimited streaming will also be available for free with advertising, or with payment of a nominal fee for use of the service without advertising." Does anyone know how this might apply to an application, like mine, that only streams audio content?

TIA,

Andy

First of all let me clarify for the record that I am not a lawyer, and that the legal reference for such questions is on http://dev.live.com/terms/ and various sub pages.

Now, as an indication of what this means, my understanding of the terms of use in plain English is that regardless of the content you store in Silverlight Streaming -- Silverlight applications, media assets (audio, video, images) -- the metered variable that will matter when the service is no longer free is the aggregated bandwith usage, which should not be over 5 TB per month per SLS user account.

So if you only stream audio content from SLS, the monthly bandwidth usage generated by your web site should be below 5 TB per month for the service to remain free. Makes sense?

Cheers.

Makes perfect sense. I'm a bit more relaxed about it now - the chances of bw usage from my site getting anywhere near 5TB are minimal. Thanks for the reply.

still though, there is advertising. and depending on how invasive the advertising is, the free hosting might not even be worth it.

Well, that was one of the points of my original post, really. I was wondering how this advertising might be implemented in an audio-only app.

i could see an option for audio or text based advertising. its definitely possible.