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| Founded | 1994 in Encino, California |
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| Founder | Marc Geiger, Keith Yokomoto, Steve Rennie, Don Muller |
| Headquarters | , United States |
Key people | James Graf (CEO) Augustine Wong (President) |
| Website | artistdirect |
ARTISTdirect is an American online digital media entertainment company.
Founded in 1996, it owns several websites, including artistdirect.com and artistdirectinterviews.com. These websites are a group of affiliate websites offering multimedia content, music news and information, communities organized around shared music interests, music-related specialty commerce and digital music services.
Artistdirect began as an online music retailer and distribution company. It hosted the Ultimate Band List (UBL), a database with information on over 600,000 artists, concerts, record labels, and other music-related resources. [1] In 1997, it partnered with the band Blink-182 to create Loserkids.com, an online store and community site for fans of the music and fashion of cutting-edge Alternative rock, punk, metal, and hard rock artists. [1] It featured merchandise from various brands including Hurley, Dickies, and Ben Sherman. In the early 2000s Artistdirect combined the database of the Ultimate Band List and online store with free audio and video streams, music news, album reviews, and movie trailers.[ citation needed ]
In 2006, Artistdirect re-launched the UBL.com site to focus on independent and unsigned bands, and helping them to be "discovered". [2] [ failed verification ] According to Media Metrix, the Artistdirect Network averages 12.4 million unique hits. [3] [ failed verification ]
In 2005 Artistdirect acquired MediaDefender, a company with a 90% share of the market for protecting against online copyright infringement. [4]
In 2009, Artistdirect acquired MediaSentry, another company that focuses on battling online copyright infringement. [5] The company will operate with two divisions, one for its copyright protection products, and another for its music-related web sites.[ citation needed ]
In August 2009, the company filed a "Form 15" with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, under which it will "go dark" and cease to make public its financial information. The company shares will also cease trading on the major stock exchanges. [6]
In March 2015, the business of ARTISTdirect was acquired by PSI Capital, Inc.[ citation needed ]
In August 2002, Marc Geiger launched his own iMUSIC label as a separate entity to ARTISTdirect Records but still under the Artistdirect umbrella. [7] It also relied on BMG distribution and on Ted Field's ADR marketing and promotion staff.[ citation needed ]
The basic idea of iMUSIC was to enter into label and distribution partnerships with long established artists (with sizable fan-bases) who no longer had major label deals.[ citation needed ]
In 1999, they created the ARTISTdirect Online Music Awards. With 20 categories, the winners were selected by viewers via online. The first ever ceremony was held at House of Blues having performances of No Doubt, Cypress Hill and Chris Isaak among others. Madonna, Eminem, The Beatles and Ricky Martin were among the first winners. [8] The following edition in 2000, had expanded their categories in rock, pop, urban/hip hop and electronica. [9]
Napster was a peer-to-peer file sharing application that originally launched on June 1, 1999 with an emphasis on digital audio file distribution. Audio songs shared on the service were typically encoded in the MP3 format. It was founded by Shawn Fanning, Sean Parker, and Hugo Sáez Contreras. As the software became popular, the company ran into legal difficulties over copyright infringement. It ceased operations in 2001 after losing a wave of lawsuits and filed for bankruptcy in June 2002.
A record label, or record company, or simply records, is a brand or trademark of music recordings and music videos, or the company that owns it. Sometimes, a record label is also a publishing company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing, promotion, and enforcement of copyright for sound recordings and music videos, while also conducting talent scouting and development of new artists, and maintaining contracts with recording artists and their managers. The term "record label" derives from the circular label in the center of a vinyl record which prominently displays the manufacturer's name, along with other information.
Mushroom Records was an Australian flagship record label, founded in 1972 in Melbourne. It published and distributed many successful Australian artists and expanded internationally, until it was merged with Festival Records in 1998. Festival Mushroom Records was later acquired by Warner Bros. Records, which operated the label from 2005 to 2010 until it folded to Warner. Founder Michael Gudinski went on to become the leader of the Mushroom Group, the largest independent music and entertainment company in Australia, with divisions such as Frontier Touring.
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MediaDefender, Inc. was a company that fought copyright infringement that offered services designed to prevent alleged copyright infringement using peer-to-peer distribution. They used unusual tactics such as flooding peer-to-peer networks with decoy files that tie up users' computers and bandwidth. MediaDefender was based in Los Angeles, California in the United States. As of March 2007, the company had approximately 60 employees and used 2,000 servers hosted in California with contracts for 9 Gbit/s of bandwidth.
A recording contract is a legal agreement between a record label and a recording artist, where the artist makes a record for the label to sell and promote. Artists under contract are normally only allowed to record for that label exclusively; guest appearances on other artists' records will carry a notice "By courtesy of ", and that label may receive a percentage of sales.
MediaSentry was a United States company that provided services to the music recording, motion picture, television, and software industries for locating and identifying IP addresses that are engaged in the use of online networks to share material in a manner said organizations claim is in violation of copyright. Their most notable customers were several trade associations including the Motion Picture Association of America and International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.
Festival Records was an Australian recording and publishing company founded in Sydney, Australia, in 1952 and operated until 2005.
TuneCore is a Brooklyn, New York–based digital music distribution, publishing and licensing service founded in 2006. TuneCore distributes music through online retailers such as iTunes, Deezer, Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music, Google Play, Tidal, Beatport and others.
Arts and media industry trade groups, such as the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), strongly oppose and attempt to prevent copyright infringement through file sharing. The organizations particularly target the distribution of files via the Internet using peer-to-peer software. Efforts by trade groups to curb such infringement have been unsuccessful with chronic, widespread and rampant infringement continuing largely unabated.
Capitol Records, Inc. v. Thomas-Rasset was the first file-sharing copyright infringement lawsuit in the United States brought by major record labels to be tried before a jury. The defendant, Jammie Thomas-Rasset, was found liable to the plaintiff record company for making 24 songs available to the public for free on the Kazaa file sharing service and ordered to pay $220,000.
Musicadium was a global digital music and video distribution service that operated between 2006 and mid-2010, based in Brisbane, Australia, until they were bought out by Valleyarm.
Maverick was an American entertainment company founded in 1992 by Warner Music Group and run by recording artist Madonna, as well as Frederick DeMann and Veronica "Ronnie" Dashev. It included a record label, a film production company, book publishing, music publishing, an adjacent Latin/Spanish language record label, and a television production company.
Believe is a global digital music company headquartered in France. Believe has several brands including TuneCore, Nuclear Blast, Naïve, Groove Attack and AllPoints.
Round Hill Music is an American music publishing company founded in 2010 by Josh Gruss, Richard Rowe, and Neil Gillis. The company runs a music publishing division, a sync and royalty administration, a music production library business, a record label and label services division, and also a Nashville songwriter services group with offices in New York, Los Angeles, Nashville and London.
