| URL | allmusic.com |
|---|---|
| Commercial? | Yes |
| Registration | No |
| Available language(s) | English |
| Owner | All Media Guide (Rovi) |
| Created by | Michael Erlewine |
| Launched | 1991 |
| Current status | Online |
Allmusic (previously All Music Guide or AMG; stylized as allmusic)[1] is an online music guide service, owned by All Media Guide. Allmusic was founded in 1991 by popular-culture archivist Michael Erlewine as a guide for consumers. Its first reference book was published the following year. When first released onto the Internet, AMG predated the World Wide Web and was first available as a Gopher site.
AMG headquarters is located in Statesville, North Carolina, United States.
Contents |
Allmusic's database, which is licensed and used in point-of-sale systems by some music retailers, includes:
Allmusic also claims to have the largest digital archive of music, including about six million digital songs, as well as the largest cover art library, with more than half a million cover image scans.
The Allmusic database is also used by several generations of Windows Media Player and Musicmatch Jukebox to identify and organize music collections. Windows Media Player 11 and the integrated MTV Urge music store have expanded the use of Allmusic data to include related artists, biographies, reviews, playlists and other data.
Allmusic is also used to provide catalog data, artist biographies, album reviews, related artist information, playlists and other information in the iTunes Music Store, Zune Marketplace, Zune player, eMusic, AOL, Yahoo!, Amazon.com and other music stores. Allmusic is also at the heart of the Naim Extended Music database used by the Naim HDX hard disk player.
Reviewers include Greg Adams, Jason Ankeny, Roxanne Blanford, Marisa Brown, John Bush, Al Campbell, Nate Cavalieri, Eugene Chadbourne, Matt Collar, Ken Dryden, Bruce Eder, Jason Elias, Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Katherine Fulton, Jo-Anne Greene, Steve Huey, David Jeffries, Thom Jurek, Andy Kellman, Rudyard Kennedy, Don Kline, the late Cub Koda, Andrew Leahey, Steve Leggett, Jason Lymangrover, Scott McClintock, Greg McIntosh, Opal Louis Nations, Wilson Neate, Heather Phares, Greg Prato,[2] Ned Raggett, Margaret Reges, Eduardo Rivadavia, John Phillip Roberts, William Ruhlmann, Tim Sendra, Michael Sutton, Rob Theakston, Richie Unterberger, Joe Viglione, Sean Westergaard, and Scott Yanow.[3]