We are Löwenfelsen

A distributed software development team – centred around Europe, available globally.

Our guiding passion is creating high-quality software to drive the leading edge forward.

What we do

Icecast

The premier scalable, open broadcasting solution, Icecast is developed in conjunction with the Xiph.Org Foundation which also maintains a full suite of open audio and video codecs that Icecast utilises – in fact audiophiles have long held Xiph's FLAC codec as the holy grail for digitised music.

With Opus Xiph also sports a high-quality audio codec optimised for mobile use-cases – all usable without incurring any licensing costs for technology!

Our expert team provides consulting and software customisation for your unique use-case. We provide the support you need from your very first steps all the way past your first 100k listeners.

Software Development

Our handcrafted software solutions enable your company to focus on its real goals and let its strengths shine like never before.

We are a fully-fledged development team able to work on every layer of POSIX-based operating systems like Linux and the various BSDs.

From high-performance network services to user-facing software to highly dynamic websites – we have a big tool belt with programming languages that include C, Perl, Lua, Java, and Kotlin. Always ready to face your challenges.

Tell us what you need and let us do the rest.

Mobile

Today, there are already more smartphones than people on the planet, with the percentage of the world population having near-constant access to mobile computation and connectivity continuing to rise rapidly.

Mobile platforms have quickly become the primary means for people to do everything from keeping up with friends, family, and the world to enjoying every imaginable type of media to engaging in all manners of business.

With our expertise in high-performance media streaming, distributed computing and target platforms ranging from powerful smart devices to tiny embedded ones, we can empower you to reach your target audience and harness the power of ubiquitous computation.

Philosophy

We are a small but diverse group of people from different backgrounds coming together as a team through remote collaboration.

Since our very inception, we have been 100% remote – a central organisational principle that not only benefited us in the pandemic, but also helps us be more sustainable by eliminating commutes and enabling virtually paperless operation, reducing our environmental footprint. If business responsibilities require team members to actually go somewhere physically, public transport is our choice.

Since 2020, we have been sponsoring an adorable porcupine of the zoo at the Tierpark Herzberg.

It is our belief the company should adapt to the lives of its employees, not the other way around. Accordingly, every member of our team can and does set their own schedule. This together with the zero second commute enables flexibility not available at traditional workplaces.

Our deepest gratitude is owed to Free & Open Source Software.

We have been part of the Free Software movement for most of our lives. It has presented us with an enormous array of software to run our digital lives freely, build our own tools, and projects on and grow as software developers and engineers through collaboration.

This makes itself felt especially in our cooperation with the Xiph.Org Foundation – not only a long-lived collaboration but a friendship. This puts us into the perfect position to bridge between our clients and the Foundation. We can work with both sides in real time without any red tape in the way.

Questions? Answers!

  • What payment options do you offer?

    All payments are in Euro via wire transfer. If you are unable to make wire transfers please let us know up-front so we can check for workable alternatives together.

    Changing the type of transfer after being invoiced is not possible.

  • What are your hourly rates?

    This depends on several factors including your location, your type of organisation (private person, business, non-profit), and the type of work (consulting/support, free or general software development, DevOps) – as a result of this, taxes might also differ.

  • What reaction time do you guarantee?

    We do not guarantee any reaction times as this would put too much strain on our team members. As we do not provide system administration services or hosting so this is generally not a problem.

  • What are your working hours? Which time zone are you in?

    Our team members enjoy a great deal of freedom regarding their personal time management. We are generally best reachable “when the sun is over Europe”.

    For all time coordination please communicate times in UTC.

  • Which jurisdiction applies to you?

    For all contracts the jurisdiction is Herzberg (Elster), Brandenburg, Germany.

  • Can you provide content or stream hosting?

    We cannot provide such services at this point. However, we can assist you in finding a provider matching your requirements.

  • How can I apply for a job?

    We are always happy to receive your application, even when not actively advertising open positions. Please send your application to: <management@loewenfelsen.net>.

    Your application must include a CV, contact details (most often e-mail and phone number), and references to your free software or community work. Please attach those as PDFs to your application.

    You can send your applications in German or English. Applications on actual paper will be ignored.

    If you're uncertain, feel free to contact us before sending any applications.

We hold talks, too!

We regularly hold online presentations with follow-up discussion rounds about topics concerning Icecast, its wider ecosystem and more generally the field of audio technology.

Attendance is free and open to anyone, but in order to keep a good signal-to-noise ratio in the discussion rounds, attendance is always limited to 7 people. Attendance by multiple people from the same organisation is limited to 2 per organisation, per event.

To get a list of upcoming public events, please check our Linkedin (a first-party service will be available shortly).

If you want to attend one of our events, please do note that you will have to register your attendance with us and have it confirmed by us.

The channels to do this, in descending preference, are:

During these events, we have a strict "cams off!" policy to keep the professional and private lives of everyone involved properly separated and avoid a set of group dynamics that has the potential to benefit discriminatory behavior.

Events aren't recorded and slides aren't published, but any event with sufficient interest will be repeated. If you missed an event and would like to see it repeated, please contact us.

We are also available to repeat any event at your organisation at our going rate. Feel free to reach out for an offer anytime.

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