Timeline
GuruHits went from a 1997 idea to a SABAM licence and public launch on 20 September 2001, then ran until streaming was switched off in 2014 — the full arc, year by year.
GuruHits spans nearly three decades — from a 1997 idea about recognising songs in five seconds, through almost four years of pioneering SABAM licensing, to its 2001 launch, thirteen operating years, and a 2024–2026 rediscovery. The dates below come from the recovered correspondence and source. A few context entries (shown muted) mark the broader HyperCard environment, not GuruHits itself.
The Idea
1997
The idea: name a song from five seconds
Joe, with a ~2,000-CD collection, notices you can recognise most hits from their first few seconds — the seed of a five-second music quiz.
The SABAM Years
9 Apr 1998
First question to SABAM
Joe writes to SABAM asking how to license short clips from his CDs for an online game.
23 Apr 1998
SABAM’s first reply (Sophie van den B.): no internet-music tariff exists; they are drafting an experimental one priced by total music duration, and ask for project details. Pioneering territory.
11 Apr 1999
guruhits.com is registered
The domain is registered via Network Solutions / InterNIC “for a new music web site” — ~2.5 years before launch.
Jul 1999
600-CD concept; US hosting & multilingual subdomains
Joe sketches a 600-CD quiz and asks about hosting the audio in the US and using nl./fr./de. subdomains per language.
Aug 1999
Belgian providers need SABAM authorization; the audio’s hosting location is irrelevant; subdomains without audio need none; lyrics must be cleared separately with publishers; the works list is declared twice a year.
Jul 2000
Joe’s lawyer frames a quiz under SABAM tariff a) (priced by stored music duration) plus a separate RealAudio “GuruHits CDs” stream under tariff b); the “siège social” principle — the company’s seat, not the server’s location — decides where royalties are owed.
Launch
Jul 2001
Prototype online (demo login)
The quiz runs password-protected at login.html (user demo / password sabam) for internal testing.
30 Jul 2001
Two SABAM qualifications: the cheap “vitrine virtuelle” (5,000 BEF/yr) vs. the per-minute “music promotion” tariff (720 clips × 5 s = 1 hour = 30,000 BEF/yr). The contract is silent on the hour’s composition — the legal basis for a rotating five-second catalogue. Also: neighbouring rights (Uradex / ASCAP) and the unenforceable art. 16.
31 Jul 2001
Neighbouring-rights dead-end
Uradex / bvergoed.be have no online-distribution tariff either (only radio rates) — echoing SABAM in 1998: pioneering territory on both sides of the rights system.
Aug 2001
Forum-shopping tested and closed (GEMA)
Joe asks Germany’s GEMA about licensing through them; GEMA replies that online use is licensed by the provider’s principal seat (Hauptfirmensitz). The “siège social” rule — now confirmed by SABAM, the lawyer and GEMA — settles GuruHits on a Belgian SABAM licence.
15 Sep 2001
First licensed year
The official SABAM authorization runs 15 Sep 2001 – 14 Sep 2002 — secured days before the public launch.
20 Sep 2001
GuruHits launches
The quiz goes public, timed for the back-to-school season to reach students.
Oct 2001
The launch-era stack: Macs on two continents
Two weeks after launch, Joe's whole entertainment network — not the quiz alone — is serving ~2 million hits a day. Behind it: five Macs in Belgium on a single 256 Kbps line — the web servers two G4/500s, a 7600/G3 and a G3/300, plus an iMac running FileMaker for administration — and a rented FreeBSD box at Pair Networks in Pittsburgh holding the ~1.2 GB of audio and static files. The quiz's HyperCard engine alone handles ~15 requests/second; players split 68% RealAudio / 15% AIFF / 11% AU / 6% QuickTime across the four clip formats.
Operating Years
May 2002
Works-list declaration
SABAM requests the twice-yearly list of works used on the site.
Oct–Nov 2002
Tenon iTools joins the stack
Joe adopts Tenon iTools (Apache on Mac OS X 10.2) for the network's NetCloak sites — testing in October, ordering in November — running NetCloak via Apple's redirect-acgi handler, later FastCGI. GuruHits' own quiz pages, though, stay on WebSTAR: nothing can run its HyperCard ACGI backend under Apache.
2002–2014
Annual renewals, priced by duration
The deployed catalogue is 180 clips × 5 seconds = 15 minutes of music — the basis for the yearly SABAM fee.
2004
Context: SABAM sues ISP Tiscali (P2P / Kazaa)
While file-sharing fights play out in court, GuruHits runs as the licensed, paid, legal opposite.
Oct 2004
Still on Classic: the quiz that wouldn't modernise
By late 2004 the rest of the network runs Apache 2 / PHP / MySQL on Xserve G5s, but guruhits.com is still served by an older PowerMac running Mac OS Classic — WebSTAR with a HyperCard CGI — because nothing can run the HyperCard ACGI under Apache. The legacy stack outlives its era by years.
2005
Renewal (Géraldine D.)
Annual renewal; SABAM confirms the 180 clips × 5 s = 15 minutes figure.
2010–2014
Later renewals (Patrick G.)
Address updates and continued annual licensing through SABAM Customer Service.
2014
Wind-down: GuruHits goes offline
Streaming on guruhits.com is deactivated by mid-2014 and the SABAM contract is terminated effective 31 Dec 2014 — after ~13 years online.
The Long Tail
2014 onward
Context: the HyperCard environment lives on
The same HyperCard environment that powered GuruHits also ran LoveTest (~650M quizzes) and a horoscope production system — long after GuruHits itself went quiet.
May 2024
Context: horoscope engine migrated HyperCard → PHP
The horoscope production system is finally migrated off HyperCard to PHP/MySQL (with GPT’s help). This is broader-environment context, not a GuruHits milestone.
Rediscovery
2024–2026
Rediscovery & reconstruction
The stack, song database, audio, high-score tables, screenshots and licensing correspondence are recovered — leading to a faithful PHP reconstruction and this history site.