I was gonna say, we absolutely had streaming music. Did it suck? Yes, but it was novel, so it was acceptable. I had a 33.6 connection that my ISP eventually upgraded to full 56K, which I discovered by noticing that the dial-up handshake sounded different.
You’ve unlocked a memory for me! I had that same experience when I heard a different series of squeals than normal only to realise the modem had negotiated something faster than 31.2!
I'm taking the downvote in stride, but 14.4 and 28.8 RealAudio streaming seems like it lasted all of 3 months and then people had napster and were pulling 96k mp3s.
Man… I sound old.