All Media Network

All Media Network
All Media Network, LLC
Private
Industry Entertainment
Predecessor All Media Guide, AllRovi
Founder Michael Erlewine
Headquarters San Francisco, California, United States
Products AllMusic, AllMovie, AllGame, SideReel, Celebified
Number of employees
 11-50
Website www.AllMediaNetwork.com
Footnotes / references
[1][2]

All Media Network (formerly All Media Guide (AMG) and AllRovi), is an American company that owns and maintains AllMusic, AllGame, AllMovie, SideReel, and Celebified. The company was founded in 1990 by popular-culture archivist Michael Erlewine.

All Music Guide (now AllMusic) was launched in 1991. Later in 1994 the All Movie Guide (now AllMovie) was launched and in 1998 the All Game Guide (now AllGame).[3]

History

The company was founded in Big Rapids, Michigan in 1990 by Michael Erlewine. With the All Music Guide the aim was to "[compile] discographic information on every artist who's made a record since Enrico Caruso gave the industry its first big boost", which launched in 1991.[4]

They expanded with the All Movie Guide (now AllMovie) in 1994, and then the All Game Guide (now AllGame) in 1998. moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1999 to take advantage of the "rich talent pool".[3] AMG was a business unit within Alliance Entertainment Corporation from 1996 until early 2005. Alliance was acquired in 1999 by Yucaipa Companies, a multi-billion dollar fund based in California.

Macrovision (now Rovi) announced on November 6, 2007 that it had agreed to purchase All Media Guide for a reported $72 million.[5][6]For a time, all of the guides were controlled by Rovi's nameservers and combined access to the All Music and All Movie Guides was provided via AllRovi.com from 2011 until 2013. In 2013, Rovi sold consumer access of the content to the newly established All Media Network, LLC, but retained control of licensing the content to other businesses. The overall website is allmedianetwork.com (previously allmediaguide.com and allrovi.com).

Rovi sold the consumer access to them to newly established All Media Network, LLC in 2013, while retaining ownership and maintenance of the content itself.[7][8]

The AllGame section of the site was shut down on December 12, 2014.[9]

Services and products

AllMusic

Main article: AllMusic

AllMusic is an online database which provides access to information about songs, albums, musicians, bands, and musical styles alongside staff-authored news, reviews, biographies, ratings and recommendations. The content was initially published in book form in 1991 as the All Music Guide, and is now freely available to the public for online reference and information as well as available via licensing for point-of-sale systems, media players, and online music stores.[3][10]

Guide series

All Media Network also produce the AllMusic guide series that includes the All Music Guide to Jazz and the All Music Guide to the Blues. Vladimir Bogdanov is the president of the series.

AllMovie

Main article: AllMovie

AllMovie, launched in 1994 as the All Movie Guide, provides access to information about actors, films, and filmmakers with staff-authored news, reviews, ratings, and recommendations. It offers limited information about Television productions, focused mainly on those released on DVD. Like AllMusic, this content is also available via licensing to point-of-sale systems, media players, and online stores.[3][11][12]

AllGame

Main article: AllGame

AllGame was active between 1998-2014 as the All Game Guide, it offered information and reviews about many console, hand held, arcade, and PC games released in the US.[2][3][13]

SideReel

Main article: SideReel

SideReel,[14] launched in 2007, is a TV community site which provides information about TV shows and episodes.[2]

Celebified

Celebified offers celebrity news and interviews and started in 2012.[2]

Content and data management

All Media Network's database was initially set up by Vladimir Bogdanov to hold the information of Erlewine's many lists.[3]

Information in the database is licensed and used in point-of-sale systems by some music retailers, includes the following:

The company 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.

Business model

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.[3]

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.[3]

All Media Network licenses large databases of metadata about movies, video games, audio books, and music releases from Rovi Corporation and publishes them online for consumer use. This includes credits, and staff-written biographies, reviews, ratings, and recommendations as well as categories such as theme or mood.[8] Rovi also makes this content available for point of sale systems in stores globally, for CD and DVD recognition in software media players such as Windows Media Player and Musicmatch Jukebox, and for providing content for a variety of websites including iTunes, Pandora, and Spotify.[15][16]

Formerly, All Media Guide sold print compilations of its information.[4]

Company details

All Media Network offices are located in San Francisco, California, and Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "All Media Network, LLC". LinkedIn. LinkedIn. Retrieved February 27, 2014.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 "Digital Entertainment Veterans Launch 'All Media Network' to Perfect Digital Media Discovery". MarketWatch. MarketWatch. December 3, 2013. Retrieved February 27, 2014.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 Bowe, Brian J. (January 24, 2007). "Make it or Break it". Metro Times. Metro Times. Retrieved February 27, 2014.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Wolf, Gary (February 1994). "All Music". http://www.wired.com''. Wired. Retrieved February 27, 2014.
  5. ↑ "Macrovision Agrees to Acquire All Media Guide Holdings, Inc." (Press release). BusinessWire. November 6, 2007. Retrieved November 6, 2007.
  6. ↑ "Macrovision Corporation, acquired All Media Guide Holdings, Inc.". Mandasoft. December 17, 2007. Retrieved June 18, 2012.
  7. ↑ "Rovi Corporation Reports Second Quarter 2013 Financial Performance". http://www.rovicorp.com''. Rovi Corporation. July 31, 2013. Retrieved February 27, 2014.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Zac, Johnson (September 2013). "What's the Story on Rovi". http://www.sidereel.com/topic/faq''. Retrieved February 27, 2014.
  9. ↑ "allgame". AllGame. Archived from the original on 15 November 2014. Retrieved 15 November 2014.
  10. ↑ "AllMusic FAQ". All Media Network, LLC. Retrieved March 29, 2014. ©2014 AllMusic, a division of All Media Network, LLC
  11. ↑ "What About TV Information". http://www.allmovie.com''. AllMovie. Retrieved February 27, 2014.
  12. ↑ "AllMovie - Movies and Films Database". All Media Network, LLC. Retrieved March 29, 2014. ©2014 AllMovie, a division of All Media Network, LLC
  13. ↑ "AllGame FAQs". All Media Network, LLC. Retrieved March 29, 2014. © 2014 AllGame, a division of All Media Network, LLC
  14. ↑ "About SideReel". All Media Network, LLC. Retrieved March 29, 2014. © 2014 SideReel, a division of All Media Network, LLC
  15. ↑ "ALLMUSIC". http://www.musicminder.com''. Retrieved February 27, 2014.
  16. ↑ Bruno, Antony (February 28, 2011). "AllMusic.com Folding Into AllRovi.com for One-Stop Entertainment Shop". Billboard. Retrieved February 27, 2014.

External links