The-Lost-Art.com: World's First Custom, Commercial Free, Mandatory Live Video DJ Internet Radio Platform, 16 Million Monthly Users, Alexa Top 100

There is a number that most people who know DJ Natural Nate® have never heard. A number that, when you understand what it means and when it happened, reframes everything about his legacy and everything about the history of online music streaming.

That number is 16 million.

Sixteen million users per month during its first year.

That was the reach of The-Lost-Art.com when it was new: a website built by a group of underground DJs in Colorado in 2009, before Twitch existed, before YouTube Live existed, before Facebook Live existed, before any of the platforms that now dominate live streaming had been invented.

Sixteen million people a month were visiting a website that DJ Natural Nate® and his collaborators built from scratch, funded themselves, and ran as an independent operation with no venture capital, no corporate backing, no major label support, and no mainstream media coverage.

Sixteen million monthly users. Alexa Top 100. Built by underground DJs in Colorado with no venture capital, no corporate backing, and no mainstream media coverage.

To put that number in context: in 2009 and 2010, sixteen million monthly users was not a small website. It was not a niche platform. It was a major internet property by any reasonable measure. Major music publications of that era, established, funded, staffed magazines and websites with full editorial teams and advertising budgets, were operating at a fraction of that traffic.

And The-Lost-Art.com was not just reaching those users. It was ranked in the Alexa Top 100 globally.

The Alexa ranking system, which measured website traffic and ranked every site on the internet by global reach, placed The-Lost-Art.com among the top 100 websites in the world at its peak. Not the top 100 music websites. Not the top 100 DJ websites. The top 100 websites. Period.

For an independent, underground, self-funded DJ platform built by a group of Colorado artists with no outside investment, that ranking was not just impressive. It was historically unprecedented.

And almost nobody outside the underground knows it happened.

This article is the full story of what The-Lost-Art.com actually became, not just what it was built to be, but what it grew into, what it proved, and why the scale of what happened there matters more now, in an era of billion-dollar streaming platforms, than it did when it was happening.

To understand why the Alexa Top 100 ranking matters, you have to understand what the internet looked like in 2009.

The man who built it. DJ Natural Nate®, not a tech entrepreneur, not a venture-backed founder, but a DJ who saw what the internet needed and built it.

The internet of 2009 was not the internet of today. Social media was still in its early adolescence. Facebook had launched its open registration in 2006 and was growing rapidly, but had not yet achieved the cultural dominance it would reach by 2012. Twitter was three years old. Instagram did not exist. TikTok would not exist for another eight years. YouTube was four years old and still primarily a platform for short clips, not long-form content or live streaming.

For music, the landscape was even more fragmented. Spotify had just launched in Europe in 2008 and would not reach the United States until 2011. SoundCloud launched in 2008 but was still a niche tool for producers. MySpace was the dominant social platform for musicians, but it was already beginning its long decline. iTunes was the primary way people purchased digital music, but streaming: the idea that you could listen to music without owning it, in real time, over the internet, was still a concept that most people associated with piracy rather than legitimate platforms.

Live streaming, specifically, was almost nonexistent as a mainstream concept. Ustream and Justin.tv existed as general-purpose live streaming platforms, but they were primitive by modern standards, had limited reach, and were not designed for music performance. The idea of a platform specifically built for live DJ video streaming, with the infrastructure to support millions of concurrent viewers, the community features to build an audience, and the philosophy to make live performance a standard rather than an exception, did not exist anywhere in the world.

Except at The-Lost-Art.com.

The Alexa ranking system worked by measuring the traffic to every website on the internet and ranking them in order of global reach. A site ranked in the Alexa Top 100 was, by definition, one of the most-visited websites on the entire internet. The list included search engines, social networks, major news organizations, e-commerce platforms, and government websites. It was the definitive measure of internet scale.

For The-Lost-Art.com to appear in that list: a site built by underground DJs, for underground DJs, funded by the people who ran it, with no outside investment and no mainstream promotion, was not just an achievement. It was a statement about what independent creators could build when they identified a genuine need and built something real to meet it.

The platform was not gaming the system. It was not buying traffic. It was not inflating its numbers through advertising or artificial means. During its first year, it was reaching 16 million people a month because 16 million people a month wanted what it offered: live, verifiable, unedited DJ performance from some of the most skilled underground artists in the world.

That is what the Alexa Top 100 meant. It meant the market had spoken. It meant the need was real. It meant the platform had found something that the internet was missing and filled it, not with corporate resources, but with vision, skill, and the willingness to build something from nothing.

The question that nobody asks, because most people do not know the story well enough to ask it, is how.

How does an underground DJ in Colorado build a platform that reaches 16 million people a month?

The answer is not what most people expect. It is not a story about viral marketing or social media growth hacking or a lucky break that sent traffic through the roof. It is a story about something much more fundamental: building something that was genuinely needed, building it well, and building it first.

The-Lost-Art.com was not the first website to stream video. It was not the first website to feature DJ content. It was not the first website to build a community around underground music. What it was, and what made it different from everything that came before it, was the first platform specifically designed to make live DJ video performance the standard rather than the exception.

Every design decision, every technical choice, every community feature was built around a single principle: if you are going to claim you can DJ, you have to prove it. Live. On camera. In real time. No editing. No post-production. No way to fake it.

The community that formed around The-Lost-Art.com was not manufactured or marketed into existence. It grew organically, driven by the quality of the performances and the authenticity of the standard the platform had set.

This was the "Prove The Mix" philosophy, and it resonated with the underground DJ community in a way that nothing else had.

The underground Breaks community: the world of Breakbeat, Electro Breaks, Electro Bass, and related genres that DJ Natural Nate® had been part of since the late 1990s, had always valued technical skill above all else. This was a community that had grown up watching DJs perform live, that had developed its own standards for what constituted real skill, and that had a deep cultural suspicion of anything that looked like it might be faked.

When The-Lost-Art.com offered a platform that made faking impossible, where every performance was live, every mix was real, and every viewer could see exactly what the DJ was doing: the community responded. Not just the Colorado community. Not just the Breaks community. The global underground DJ community.

DJs from around the world began broadcasting on the platform. Viewers from around the world began tuning in. The community that formed around The-Lost-Art.com was not manufactured or marketed into existence. It grew organically, driven by the quality of the performances and the authenticity of the standard the platform had set.

And as the community grew, the traffic grew. And as the traffic grew, the Alexa ranking climbed. And as the Alexa ranking climbed, more DJs wanted to be on the platform, and more viewers wanted to watch, and the cycle continued until The-Lost-Art.com was one of the most-visited websites on the internet.

Sixteen million people a month. Alexa Top 100. Built by underground DJs. Funded by the people who ran it. Promoted by the quality of what it offered.

That is how you build a platform that reaches 16 million people.

DJ Natural Nate® did not build The-Lost-Art.com alone. The platform was a collaborative effort, and the people who built it alongside him deserve to be named and remembered.

Jiggabot and DJ Natural Nate®, two of the architects of The-Lost-Art.com. The creative partnership that helped build a platform reaching 16 million people a month.

Jiggabot, whose real name and full story are documented elsewhere in this blog, was one of the central figures in the TLA ecosystem. A producer, collaborator, and creative partner, Jiggabot brought a different set of skills and perspectives to the platform that complemented and expanded what DJ Natural Nate® was building. The creative partnership between the two of them, documented in the "Love Letters in Sound" release that Juno Download reviewed, was one of the defining relationships of the TLA era.

Damian Doyle was another key figure. A DJ and broadcaster whose contributions to the platform helped establish its credibility and reach within the broader DJ community. His involvement brought a level of professionalism and community connection that helped The-Lost-Art.com grow beyond its Colorado roots.

Kris Peacock, known in the community as Preserving The Pitch, brought technical skill and a deep commitment to the "Prove The Mix" philosophy that was central to everything the platform stood for. His performances on the platform were among the most technically demanding and most watched, and his presence helped attract other high-caliber DJs to broadcast there.

These were not just contributors. They were co-architects of something that had never existed before. Each of them brought something essential to the platform, technical skill, community relationships, creative vision, or the simple willingness to show up, perform live, and prove it.

And behind all of them, providing the infrastructure, the vision, and the relentless drive to build something that the internet did not yet have, was DJ Natural Nate®.

He was not just a performer on the platform. He was the reason the platform existed. He had identified the need, articulated the philosophy, assembled the team, and built the thing. The 16 million users per month during its first year and the Alexa Top 100 ranking were not accidents. They were the result of a clear vision, executed with discipline and skill, by a group of people who believed in what they were building.

The-Lost-Art.com was not a startup. It was not a business plan. It was not a pitch deck or a funding round or a growth strategy. It was a group of DJs who looked at the internet and said: this is missing something. And then they built it.

Numbers are abstract. Sixteen million monthly users is a number that is easy to say and hard to feel. So let's make it concrete.

During its first year, sixteen million monthly users meant that The-Lost-Art.com was receiving more traffic than most major music publications in the world. It meant that more people were visiting a self-funded underground DJ platform every month than were reading some of the most established music magazines and websites on the internet.

It meant that when a DJ broadcast live on The-Lost-Art.com, they were potentially performing for an audience that dwarfed anything they could have reached through any other channel available to an independent underground artist at that time. Not a local club. Not a regional radio station. Not even a national broadcast. A global audience of millions.

For the DJs who performed on the platform, this was transformative. The-Lost-Art.com was not just a place to stream. It was a place to be seen, really seen, by a global audience that was there specifically because they cared about what they were watching. Not casual viewers who had stumbled onto a video. Not algorithm-driven traffic that had been served a recommendation. People who had come to the platform because they wanted to watch live DJ performance and they knew that The-Lost-Art.com was where the best of it was happening.

For DJ Natural Nate®, the scale of what The-Lost-Art.com achieved was both a validation and a responsibility. A validation because it proved that the "Prove The Mix" philosophy was not just a personal standard, it was something the global DJ community had been waiting for. A responsibility because maintaining that standard at scale, keeping the platform true to its founding principles as it grew, required constant attention and constant commitment.

More people were visiting a self-funded underground DJ platform every month than were reading some of the most established music magazines and websites on the internet.

He never lost sight of what the platform was for. Even as the traffic grew and the Alexa ranking climbed, The-Lost-Art.com remained what it had always been: a place where DJs proved their skill, live, on camera, in real time. No exceptions. No shortcuts. No way to fake it.

That consistency, that refusal to compromise the standard even as the scale grew, is part of what made the platform what it became. And it is part of what makes the story of The-Lost-Art.com so important to understand now, when the streaming platforms that followed it have largely abandoned the accountability that was its founding principle.

One of the most important facts about The-Lost-Art.com, and one of the most frequently misunderstood, is the timeline.

The-Lost-Art.com launched in 2009.

Twitch launched in 2011. Two years later.

YouTube Live launched its public streaming feature in 2013. Four years later.

Facebook Live launched in 2016. Seven years later.

Instagram Live launched in 2016. Seven years later.

TikTok Live launched in 2019. Ten years later.

Every platform that now dominates live streaming, every platform that has made live video performance a standard part of the internet landscape, came after The-Lost-Art.com. Not slightly after. Years after. In some cases, a decade after.

This is not a coincidence. This is not a case of parallel development where multiple teams were working on the same idea at the same time. This is a case of a group of underground DJs in Colorado identifying a need, building a solution, proving the concept at scale: 16 million monthly users, Alexa Top 100, and then watching as the rest of the internet caught up to what they had already done.

The-Lost-Art.com did not benefit from the infrastructure that Twitch or YouTube Live would later build. It did not have the engineering resources of Google or Amazon. It did not have the user base of Facebook or Instagram. It built its own infrastructure, developed its own community, and reached its scale through the quality of what it offered and the authenticity of the standard it maintained.

And it did all of this first.

The Wayback Machine: the Internet Archive's tool for capturing and preserving historical web content, has archived The-Lost-Art.com from 2009 onward. Those archives are publicly accessible and provide verifiable, timestamped documentation of the platform's existence and operation from its founding year. The evidence is not anecdotal. It is not based on memory or testimony. It is preserved in the historical record of the internet itself.

The-Lost-Art.com was first. The timeline proves it. The archive confirms it. The 16 million monthly users and the Alexa Top 100 ranking document the scale of what was built.

And DJ Natural Nate® was the person who built it.

Here is the question that deserves an honest answer: if The-Lost-Art.com reached 16 million monthly users and ranked in the Alexa Top 100, why has almost nobody outside the underground heard of it?

The answer is uncomfortable, but it is important.

The-Lost-Art.com was built by and for the underground. Not the mainstream. Not the commercial music industry. Not the tech press or the music press or the cultural commentators who decide what gets remembered and what gets forgotten.

The underground DJ community: the world of Breakbeat, Electro Breaks, Electro Bass, and related genres, has always operated outside the mainstream. This is not a bug. It is a feature. The underground has always valued authenticity over visibility, skill over celebrity, and community over commerce. The people who built The-Lost-Art.com were not trying to be famous. They were trying to build something real.

And they succeeded. Sixteen million monthly users is real. Alexa Top 100 is real. The archive is real. The timeline is real.

The fact that something was not covered does not mean it did not happen. The-Lost-Art.com happened. The 16 million users happened. The Alexa Top 100 happened. The archive exists.

But the mainstream music press was not covering underground DJ platforms in 2009. The tech press was not writing about self-funded streaming sites built by Colorado DJs. The cultural commentators who would later write extensively about the history of live streaming: the rise of Twitch, the democratization of live video, the transformation of creator culture, were not paying attention to what was happening at The-Lost-Art.com.

This is how history gets written wrong. Not through malice. Not through conspiracy. Through the simple fact that the people who write history tend to cover what they can see, and what they can see tends to be what is already visible to them. The underground, by definition, is not visible to the mainstream. That is what makes it the underground.

But the fact that something was not covered does not mean it did not happen. The-Lost-Art.com happened. The 16 million users happened. The Alexa Top 100 happened. The timeline happened. The archive exists.

And DJ Natural Nate® built it.

The story of The-Lost-Art.com is not a story about what could have been or what should have been recognized. It is a story about what was. What was built, what was achieved, and what was proven, by an underground DJ from Colorado, with no corporate backing, no venture capital, and no mainstream support, before any of the platforms that now dominate live streaming existed.

That story deserves to be told accurately. It deserves to be told completely. And it deserves to be told with the specificity and the evidence that the historical record supports.

Sixteen million monthly users. Alexa Top 100. First in the world. Built in 2009.

That is the story of The-Lost-Art.com. And that is part of the legacy of DJ Natural Nate®.

In 2026, live streaming is not a novelty. It is infrastructure. Twitch has tens of millions of daily active users. YouTube Live is integrated into the world's largest video platform. TikTok Live reaches billions. The idea of watching someone perform live, on camera, in real time, over the internet, is so commonplace that it is difficult to remember a time when it did not exist.

But it did not always exist. There was a time, not long ago, in the grand scheme of internet history, when live streaming was not infrastructure. When it was an idea. When someone had to build it first.

DJ Natural Nate® built it first.

Not for DJs specifically. Not for the underground specifically. For the internet. For the concept of live video performance as a standard, verifiable, accessible form of creative expression. The-Lost-Art.com proved that there was a market for it, that the technology could support it, and that an audience of millions was waiting for it, years before any of the platforms that now dominate the space had been built.

What does that mean now?

It means that the history of live streaming is incomplete without The-Lost-Art.com. It means that the story of how the internet learned to watch live performance, how live video became a standard part of creator culture, has a chapter that most people have never read. A chapter set in Colorado, in 2009, built by underground DJs with no outside support, that reached 16 million people a month and ranked in the Alexa Top 100.

It means that DJ Natural Nate® is not just a world-record turntablist and a Breakspoll #43 Top 50 DJ (2011) and a registered trademark and a Breakbeat pioneer. He is also an internet pioneer. A streaming pioneer. A person who looked at the internet in 2009 and saw something it was missing, and then built it, before anyone else did, at a scale that proved the concept, with a standard that the platforms which followed him have largely failed to maintain.

The-Lost-Art.com is archived. The timeline is documented. The numbers are real.

The legacy is not a claim. It is a fact.

And it belongs to DJ Natural Nate®.