All Media Network (formerly All Media Guide [AMG] and AllRovi) is an American company that owns and maintains AllMusic, AllMovie, AllGame (until its closure in 2014), SideReel and Celebified. The company was founded in 1990 by popular-culture archivist Michael Erlewine. All Media Network offices are located in San Francisco, California, and Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States.
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).
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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.
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". AMG was a business unit within Alliance Entertainment Corporation from 1996 until early 2005. Alliance was acquired in 1999 by Yucaipa Companies, a multibillion-dollar fund based in California.
Macrovision (now TiVo) announced on November 6, 2007 that it had agreed to purchase All Media Guide for a reported $102 million; $72 million in cash was paid up front, and $30 million in contingent payments were made one year later. 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.
The AllGame section of the site was shut down on December 12, 2014.
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Services and products
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.
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
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.
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. The Site started in February 1998 a goal of becoming the most comprehensive game database available. In a farewell message on their site, the staff noted that they "didn't all know exactly what we were doing in those early days but it was an exciting time to be helping build an online game database before the Internet exploded with numerous websites dedicated to video games."
SideReel
SideReel, launched in 2007, is a TV community site which provides information about TV shows and episodes.
Celebified
Celebified offers celebrity news and interviews and started in 2012.
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.
Information in the database is licensed and used in point-of-sale systems by some music retailers, includes the following:
- Basic data: names, genres, credits, copyright information, product numbers.
- Descriptive content: styles, tones, moods, themes, nationalities.
- Relational content: similar artists and albums, influences.
- Editorial content: biographies, reviews, rankings.
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.
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. 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.
Formerly, All Media Guide sold print compilations of its information.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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