Company type
Internet services
July 2004
- San Francisco, California, U.S.
- Cambridge, England
April 2019
Acquired by Taptica International
525 (June 2017)[1]
Blinkx was founded in 2004, went public on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange in 2007, and began trading as RhythmOne in 2017.[4] The company is headquartered in San Francisco, California, and London, England. RhythmOne acquired All Media Network and its portfolio of web properties in April 2015. In April 2019, RhythmOne merged with Taptica International (renamed Tremor International in June 2019), an advertising technology company headquartered in Israel.[5]
All Media Network, LLC
All Media Guide, AllRovi
June 26, 1990[39]
Big Rapids, Michigan, U.S.
11-50
Operations[edit]
Business model[edit]
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.[44]
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.[51] 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.[62][63]
Formerly, All Media Guide sold print compilations of its information.[43]
RhythmOne's database was initially set up by Vladimir Bogdanov.[44]
Information in the database is licensed and used in point-of-sale systems by some music retailers, includes the following:
Adware controversy[edit]
A lengthy criticism of Blinkx by Harvard Business School Associate Professor[64] Ben Edelman, published in January 2014,[65] sought to prove that Blinkx continued the adware operations of two companies it acquired, Prime Visibility Media Group[66] and Zango,[67] and was defrauding advertisers. Blinkx responded point-by-point in March 2014, stating that it did not install adware without user consent and that they did not wholly acquire Zango or its assets.[68] An earlier, 2009 blog post by Ken Smith, Zango co-founder and former CTO, supported Edelman's assertion that Blinkx acquired all of Zango's assets.[69]
Forbes contributor Peter Cohan claimed that Edelman's post caused a massive drop in Blinkx's stock price,[70] and further noted that Blinkx's initial, now-deleted corporate response on 30 January 2014[71] was largely an attack on Edelman's methods, rather than on the content of his analysis. However, New York Times blogger Mark Scott theorized that Edelman's undisclosed client(s), who funded his research on Blinkx, may have been hedge funds who profited from shorting the drop in Blinkx's stock price.[72]
Edelman published further research in April 2014, claiming that Blinkx offered users deceptive software installers and used deceptive pop-up advertisements.[73] He continued to defend his claim that Blinkx purchased all of Zango's assets, including its physical headquarters, and argued that a Federal Trade Commission order against Zango in 2007[74] may still apply to Blinkx. A section of the post co-authored with digital fraud investigation consultant Wesley Brandi also defended and furthered his initial claims that Blinkx was defrauding its advertising affiliates.[75]
