When David Bowie became an Internet service provider in 1998, a man named Ron Roy helped him start the business. Now, three days after the legendary musician's death at age 69, we've interviewed Roy about how "BowieNet" came to life and why it was so important to the artist.

"David was tremendously involved from day one," Roy told Ars via e-mail. Roy appeared in some of the first press releases that followed BowieNet's US and UK launches; we tracked him down at his current business, Wines That Rock.

It was a lot easier to become an Internet service provider in 1998 than it is today. Instead of the enormous expense of deploying fiber or cable throughout a city, ISPs could spring to life by selling dial-up connections to anyone with a telephone line. BowieNet's dial-up service sold full access to the Internet for $19.95 a month (or £10.00 in the UK), but it was also a fan club that provided exclusive access to David Bowie content such as live video feeds from his studio. Customers who already had a dial-up Internet provider and didn't want to switch could buy access to BowieNet content separately for $5.95 a month. BowieNet had about 100,000 customers at its peak, Roy said.

"Myself and my business partner met David Bowie's manager and pitched the idea of an online fan club and ISP in 1996 that centered about David," Roy explained. "The name of [the] venture/company was UltraStar—I was a founder and partner and actually David became our first investor and shortly after a partner in UltraStar. UltraStar was launched in 1998 and eventually sold to Live Nation in 2006."

Bowie was "very hands-on in the design of BowieNet," Roy said. Roy, meanwhile, managed the relationship between Bowie and a Web design and development company, also securing technology partners to get Internet access set up. "Instead of building an infrastructure from scratch we decided to partner with an organization that had a turnkey solution (hosting, ISP services, customer service, billing)," Roy said. (That company was Concentric Network Corporation, which was later bought by XO Holdings.) "UltraStar concentrated on marketing and business development. As we grew the company we started to bring more IT services and support in-house."

UltraStar's fan club clients also included The Rolling Stones, Madonna, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Who, and the New York Yankees, Roy said. The company mostly focused on "hosting, website development, chat rooms, audio platforms, emerging technologies, downloads, etc."

A CD-ROM with Internet Explorer and David Bowie songs

BowieNet's launch announcement on July 17, 1998 offered customers "a fully customizable home page, davidbowie.com e-mail address (your.name@davidbowie.com), news groups, chat rooms, online shareware, multi-player gaming, and much much more." Users were also given 5MB of space to create their own Web pages, with BowieNet "host[ing] these pages at no additional charge and ensur[ing] their placement on the World Wide Web, giving access to all users of the Internet."

Users were sent a CD-ROM containing exclusive audio and video tracks and "the latest version of Internet Explorer, customized specifically for davidbowie.com." Customers could also use the Netscape browser.

"BowieNet was an immersive portal—David Bowie 24/7," Roy said. "Fans could get access to unreleased music, artwork, live chats, first-in-line tickets, backstage access, tickets to private, fan club-only concerts... [Bowie] always looked to keep BowieNet and UltraStar fresh by exploring new technologies to keep fans engaged and excited. He always preached [that] it's about the experience, the new."

"I wanted to create an environment where not just my fans but all music lovers could be a part of the same community, a single place where the vast archives of music information could be accessed, views stated and ideas exchanged," Bowie said in that first announcement.

After a few years BowieNet switched from the Internet access business to a pure subscription fan club model, as Internet users replaced dial-up connections with faster DSL or cable broadband.

Roy lost contact with Bowie after the musician stopped touring in 2004 but stayed in close contact with his management. Now, he says, Bowie was ahead of his time when it came to technology. The singer saw the power of sharing music over the Internet and the decline of record labels.

"Artists now had a channel to distribute music without the 'middle man,'" Roy said. "Remember—BowieNet was a community with few rules and lots of sharing, many years before Facebook, Twitter and the current social culture. David was the early innovator in this space... but he was also smart, and I believe no matter what he did with his life, it would have amounted to something on a grand scale."