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All Music Guide

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Allmusic (previously the All Music Guide) is a metadata database about music, owned by All Media Guide. Allmusic was founded in 1991 by popular-culture archivist Michael Erlewine and mathematician Vladimir Bogdanov, Ph.D., as a guide for consumers. Its first reference book was published the next year. AMG predates the World Wide Web and was first available as a [(protocol)|Gopher] site.

Content

Allmusic content is created by professional data entry staff, editors, and writers. The network of writers includes over 900 music critics who review albums and songs and write artist biographies. Reviewers include Ned Raggett, Stephen Thomas Erlewine, William Ruhlmann, Richie Unterberger, Opal Louis Nations, John Phillip Roberts, Eugene Chadbourne, Jo-Anne Greene, John Bush, Scott Yanow, Eduardo Rivadavia, Jason Ankeny, Thom Jurek, Andy Kellman, Ken Dryden, Roxanne Blanford, and Greg Prato .

Allmusic's database is licensed and used in point-of-sale systems by some music retailers. The database consists of:

  • Basic Metadata: names, genres, credits, copyright info, product numbers, etc.
  • Descriptive Content: styles, tones, moods, themes, nationalities, etc.
  • Relational Content: similar artists and albums, influences, etc.
  • Editorial Content: biographies, reviews, rankings, etc.

Allmusic also claims to have the world's largest digital archive of music, including approximately six million songs fully digitized, as well as the world's largest cover art library, with over half a million cover image scans.

The website allmusic.com is a sample of what is available in the database. The site was launched in 1995 as an online demonstration for potential database licensees of the breadth of content included in the database. Having high internet traffic ratings, the Allmusic website suffers from slow speed.

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 metadata.

Allmusic is also used to provide metadata including catalog data, artist biographies, album reviews, related artist information, playlists and other information in the iTunes Music Store, eMusic, AOL, Yahoo!, Amazon.com, and other music stores.

AMG headquarters are located in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

AMG LASSO

The Allmusic database was made available in 2004 as part of the AMG LASSO comprehensive media recognition service. The LASSO media recognition service automatically recognizes CDs, digital audio files, and DVDs. After the media is recognized, the service delivers related metadata content from All Media Guide metadata databases.

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Last updated on Saturday March 08, 2008 at 21:09:17 PST (GMT -0800)
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