Scott Ambrose Reilly | |
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| Employer | The Orchard |
Scott Ambrose Reilly is a music executive whose expertise is in the digital music field. Since 2000, Reilly has held senior positions in digital music companies such as Digital Club Network, eMusic and Amazon. He is currently CEO of X5 Music Group. When Reilly exited Amazon's music division for its Kindle unit, his farewell letter to peers was leaked to the media and widely circulated for criticism of many in the established music industry. [1]
Raised in San Diego, California, Scott Ambrose Reilly started his music career as a fan, and spent much of the late 1980s following artists such as Mojo Nixon to gigs. [2] Nixon soon hired him to help on tour, [2] and from there he became Nixon's long-term manager. He also appeared in the choir of several of his psychobilly albums, such as 1989's Root Hog or Die . [2]
From 1986 to 1999 Reilly owned and operated Bullethead Management in the greater New York City area. The company grew from being a one-man artist management practice to having twelve employees and over 20 clients, including Mojo Nixon, Dash Rip Rock and Fred Eaglesmith. [3] Reilly began using BBC systems to sell concert tickets online, [4] and regularly attended concerts such as SXSW. [5] In the 1990s he began managing the band God Street Wine, who were early adopters of internet promotion. They launched a website in 1994, also selling tickets and mp3s online. [2]
In 2000 Reilly became executive director of Digital Club Festival, the four-day launch event for Digital Club Network, or DCN. DCN was a New York-based website that webcast live from 54 music venues across the country, making it the world's largest webcaster of live music at the time. [4] Digital Club Network also offered paid music downloads and a few live CDs by artists such as the Meat Puppets on its own label. [6]
From 2000 to 2003 he was Senior VP of venue/artist licensing and relations of DCN, and he became president in 2003. In 2004 he oversaw DCN's acquisition by eMusic. [3] Reilly was named Senior VP of Content Acquisition and Label Relations, and the eMusic catalog grew from 400,000 tracks to 1.5million tracks, making it the largest DRM-free catalog in the world. [3]
While at eMusic from 2004 to 2006, Reilly also [3] became president of eMusicLive [6] and helped develop eMusicLive's "See a Show, Buy a Show" (SASBAS) technology, where the company recorded the live performances of consenting artists, then instantly burned CDs to sell alongside band merchandise. eMusicLive was the first company to have permanent fixtures in multiple clubs in a single city. [6]
In September 2006, he moved to Seattle to oversee the launched of Amazon MP3 in the United States, England, Denmark, France, Austria, Switzerland, and China. [3] Hired as senior manager of digital music at Amazon.com, [1] Reilly oversaw content deals, operations and helped maintain relationships with labels. [1]
Amazon MP3 became iTune's most aggressive competitor, [5] building a DRM-free catalog of more than 15 million tracks. [2] Around 2007, most online digital music was purchased from iTunes, with Apple DRM contained so they could only function on Apple products. Allofmp3.com, one of the few early DRM-free businesses, were sued and forced out of business, leaving Apple with the monopoly. Under Reilly Amazon opened an online DRM-free music library at 99 cents a song, [7] becoming the first service to launch all four major labels in MP3 format. [4] Apple followed suit, beginning to offer DRM-free options. [7]
In April 2010 he left Amazon MP3 to work on the Amazon division Kindle. [3] He stated he had overseen more than 10,000 digital licensing deals at that point in his career. [1]
When Reilly exited for Kindle, his farewell letter to the music industry was leaked to the media and widely circulated. [1] He spoke positively of Amazon, but with open contempt for its competitors. [2] Specifically, they'd pressured recording companies to drop support for Amazon's successful Daily Deal practice, where Amazon lowered prices on specific music titles and promoted them heavily the day before they were released. [1]
While at Kindle he worked as senior manager for global business development. [3] However, one year later he announced he was leaving Amazon to serve as the U.S. CEO of X5 Music Group. His reasons were again amicable towards Amazon, with him stating: "I loved working at Amazon and their singular focus on the customer taught me a great deal. But the lure of working with a music great company who have had successes in digital music was just too strong." [5]
As North American CEO of X5 Music Group, [8] Reilly helped launch the division in the Empire State Building [8] [9] and expanded its catalogue of compilations. [4] In 2011 X5 was the No. 2 classical music label on the US charts, second only to Universal Music. [10] Also in 2011 the classical label began branching into genres such as folk, bluegrass, [11] blues, and jazz, [12] and forming partnerships with non-classical labels such as Sun Records, whose back catalog included artists such as Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis. [12] In November 2011 X5 released one of its most successful albums, The Greatest Video Game Music, performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra. [13] It received praise from IGN [14] and was named "weirdest hit album" of 2011 by Rolling Stone . [15]
At X5 Reilly manages relationships with digital music services including iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, Deezer, Xbox Music, MOG, Rhapsody for USA, EU, Australia, Asia and ROW. [3] About X5's marketing strategy, Reilly has stated "you have to pay attention to the [outlets]. iTunes wants things to be designed well and look good. Amazon [likes] value and convenience. Spotify is search-based, so we created an app to browse classical music, and other apps are on the way." [8] Reilly oversaw the launch in early 2012 of Classify, an app created through a partnership with X5 and Spotify that helps music browsers discover classical music. [12]
X5 announced in April 2013 that it had started U5, a joint venture with the music conglomerate Universal Music Group, headed by Reilly. It gave X5 access to over 50,000 of Universal's classical tracks, and another 50,000 jazz and blues songs. [16]
Reilly has been interviewed about digital media in media outlets such as Marketplace, [10] the New York Times , [16] and the Wall Street Journal . [11]
Scott started at The Orchard in May 2013. As head of a newly created division at The Orchard, Scott oversees the acquisition of new catalogs. Some of the catalogs already under his supervision include, TVT Records, Hathut Records and Xanadu Records. Scott's division recently acquired the Blind Pig Records catalog. [17]
The iTunes Store is a software-based online digital media store operated by Apple Inc. that opened on April 28, 2003, as a result of Steve Jobs' push to open a digital marketplace for music. As of April 2020, iTunes offers 60 million songs, 2.2 million apps, 25,000 TV shows, and 65,000 films. When it opened, it was the only legal digital catalog of music to offer songs from all five major record labels. As of June 2013, the iTunes Store possessed 575 million active user accounts, and served over 315 million mobile devices.
Mercury Records was an American record label that had significant success as an independent operation in the 1940s and 1950s, and that later was owned by Philips, PolyGram, and Universal Music Group. In the United States, it operated through Island Records; in the United Kingdom, it was distributed by EMI Records.
FairPlay is a digital rights management (DRM) technology developed by Apple Inc. It is built into the MP4 multimedia file format as an encrypted AAC audio layer, and was used until April 2009 by the company to protect copyrighted works sold through iTunes Store, allowing only authorized devices to play the content.
Linn Records is a Glasgow-based record label which specialises in classical music, jazz and Scottish music. It is part of Linn Products.
eMusic is an online music and audiobook store that operates by subscription. In exchange for a monthly subscription eMusic users can download a fixed number of MP3 tracks per month. eMusic was established in 1998, is headquartered in New York City with an office in London, and is owned by TriPlay.
Beatport is an American electronic music-oriented online music store owned by LiveStyle. The company is based in Denver, Los Angeles, and Berlin. Beatport is oriented primarily towards DJs, selling full songs as well as resources that can be used for remixes.
Digital distribution is the delivery or distribution of digital media content such as audio, video, e-books, video games, and other software. The term is generally used to describe distribution over an online delivery medium, such as the Internet, thus bypassing physical distribution methods, such as paper, optical discs, and VHS videocassettes. The term online distribution is typically applied to freestanding products; downloadable add-ons for other products are more commonly known as downloadable content. With the advancement of network bandwidth capabilities, online distribution became prominent in the 21st century, with prominent platforms such as Amazon Video, and Netflix's streaming service starting in 2007.
Audible is an American online audiobook and podcast service that allows users to purchase and stream audiobooks and other forms of spoken word content. This content can be purchased individually or under a subscription model where the user receives "credits" that can be redeemed for content monthly and receive access to a curated on-demand library of content. Audible is the United States' largest audiobook producer and retailer. The service is owned by Audible, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc., headquartered in Newark, New Jersey.
OuterSpace is an underground hip hop duo from North Philadelphia. Originally a trio consisting of three Puerto Rican friends that then took the artist names Planetary, Jedeye and Crypt the Warchild. The founding member Mario Collazo (Planetary) was then attending 10th grade, while the other two, Richard Cruz (Jedeye) and Marcus Albaladejo, were in 8th grade.
Mobipocket SA was a French company incorporated in March 2000 that created the .mobi e-book file format and produced the Mobipocket Reader software for mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDA) and desktop operating systems.
OnClassical is an Italian independent record label. It features classical music mostly for single instrument or chamber ensemble.
Amie Street was an indie online music store and social network service created in 2006 by Brown University seniors Elliott Breece, Elias Roman, and Joshua Boltuch, in Providence, Rhode Island. The site was notable for its demand-based pricing. The company was later moved to Long Island City in Queens, New York. In late 2010, the site was sold to Amazon who redirected customers to their own website.
SpiralFrog was a very early music streaming service based in New York City that launched in the United States and Canada on September 17, 2007. SpiralFrog offered free and legal music downloads, all supported by advertising, and was the largest site of its kind in North America. On March 19, 2009, SpiralFrog terminated operations due to loan recalls. While SpiralFrog was not successful in the end, it nonetheless helped shaped the digital music industry shift from the purchase to streaming models, and its ultimate revenue recovery
The following is a comparison of e-book formats used to create and publish e-books.
PassAlong Networks, also known as Tennessee Pacific Group, LLC, was a developer of digital media innovations and services located in Franklin, Tennessee. The company had a digital music library of three million licensed songs, two million of which were raw MP3 music files, and provided a series of products and services in the digital media marketplace.
Amazon Music is a music streaming platform and online music store operated by Amazon. Launched in public beta on September 25, 2007, in January 2008 it became the first music store to sell music without digital rights management (DRM) from the four major music labels, as well as many independents. All tracks were originally sold in 256 kilobits-per-second variable bitrate MP3 format without per-customer watermarking or DRM; however, some tracks are now watermarked. Licensing agreements with recording companies restrict the countries in which the music can be sold.
Digital rights management (DRM) tools or technological protection measures (TPM) are a set of access control technologies for restricting the use of proprietary hardware and copyrighted works. DRM technologies try to control the use, modification, and distribution of copyrighted works, as well as systems within devices that enforce these policies.
HDtracks is a high-resolution digital music store offering DRM-free music in multiple formats as well as cover art with Audio CD-quality and high-definition audio master recording quality download selections.
X5 Music Group is a record label based in Stockholm, Sweden with a branch in Manhattan, New York. Founded in 2003, it is a digital-only label that primarily licenses pre-existing music for compilation albums. X5 originally focused on classical music, and in 2011 its custom album The Greatest Video Game Music, featuring the London Philharmonic Orchestra, debuted at #23 on the Billboard 200. Since 2009 the company has had 24 albums on the chart; all 24 were custom digital releases produced by the label.
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