Ritmoteca.com - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Ritmoteca.com was an online music store

Online music store

An online music store is an online business which sells audio files, usually music, on a per-song and/or subscription basis. It may be differentiated from music streaming services in that the music store offers the actual music file, while streaming services offer partial or full listening without...

and early pioneer in the online downloadable music space. Founded in Miami, Florida

Florida

Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...

in 1998 during the Dot-com bubble

Dot-com bubble

The dot-com bubble was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1995–2000 during which stock markets in industrialized nations saw their equity value rise rapidly from growth in the more...

by Ivan J. Parron

Ivan J. Parron

Ivan Jose Parron, Esq. is an American entertainment law attorney and entrepreneur often referred to as the inventor of the Online music store. He is the founder of and principal attorney for , an entertainment, media and sports law firm based in Miami Beach, New York City and Washington D.C...

, and Ricardo Decubas, the company was the leading Latin music download website and an early predecessor to Apple Inc.'s now highly successful iTunes

ITunes

iTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....

business model of selling digital music downloads over the Internet. Mr. Parron founded the company after operating the successful web development company Internet Marketing Consultants, which designed Ritmoteca's revolutionary graphical user interface for retailing online music. Ritmoteca.com aggregated exclusive digital distribution rights from over one hundred independent Latin music record labels and amassed a library of over 500,000 music tracks and videos, including exclusive digital distribution rights to catalogs of some of the worlds top renowned Latin artists such as Marc Anthony

Marc Anthony

Marc Anthony is an American singer-songwriter, actor and producer. Anthony is the top selling tropical salsa artist of all time. The two-time Grammy and three-time Latin Grammy–winner has sold more than 30 million albums worldwide. He is best known for his Latin salsa numbers and ballads...

, Tito Puente

Tito Puente

Tito Puente, , born Ernesto Antonio Puente, was a Latin jazz and Salsa musician. The son of native Puerto Ricans Ernest and Ercilia Puente, of Spanish Harlem in New York City, Puente is often credited as "El Rey de los Timbales" and "The King of Latin Music"...

and Celia Cruz

Celia Cruz

Celia Cruz was a Cuban-American salsa singer, and was one of the most successful Salsa performers of the 20th century, having earned twenty-three gold albums...

. The company was also the first digital Latin music companies to sign digital distribution agreements with the major record labels, signing agreements with Universal Music Group

Universal Music Group

Universal Music Group is an American music group, the largest of the "big four" record companies by its commanding market share and its multitude of global operations...

, Sony Music Entertainment

Sony Music Entertainment

Sony Music Entertainment ' is the second-largest global recorded music company of the "big four" record companies and is controlled by Sony Corporation of America, the United States subsidiary of Japan's Sony Corporation....

, Bertelsmann Music Group and Warner Music Group

Warner Music Group

Warner Music Group is the third largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry, making it one of the big four record companies...

. These agreements gave the company digital distribution rights for artists such as U2

U2 are an Irish rock band from Dublin. Formed in 1976, the group consists of Bono , The Edge , Adam Clayton , and Larry Mullen, Jr. . U2's early sound was rooted in post-punk but eventually grew to incorporate influences from many genres of popular music...

, Madonna (entertainer)

Madonna (entertainer)

Madonna is an American singer-songwriter, actress and entrepreneur. Born in Bay City, Michigan, she moved to New York City in 1977 to pursue a career in modern dance. After performing in the music groups Breakfast Club and Emmy, she released her debut album in 1983...

, Britney Spears

Britney Spears

Britney Jean Spears is an American recording artist and entertainer. Born in McComb, Mississippi, and raised in Kentwood, Louisiana, Spears began performing as a child, landing acting roles in stage productions and television shows. She signed with Jive Records in 1997 and released her debut album...

, Enrique Iglesias

Enrique Iglesias

Enrique Iglesias is a Spanish pop music singer, a son of singer Julio Iglesias.Enrique started his musical career on Mexican label Fonovisa...

and Jay-Z

Jay-Z

Shawn Corey Carter , better known by his stage name Jay-Z, is an American rapper, record producer, entrepreneur, and occasional actor. He is one of the most financially successful hip hop artists and entrepreneurs in America, having a net worth of over $450 million as of 2010...

. The company grew to as many as 200 employees through investments from institutional and "angel" investors including Bain Capital

Bain Capital

Bain Capital LLC is a Boston-based private equity firm founded in 1984 by partners from the consulting firm Bain & Company. Originally conceived as an early-stage, growth-oriented investment fund, Bain Capital today manages approximately $65 billion in assets, and its strategies include private...

. The company forged key strategic alliances with companies including Microsoft

Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

, MSN

MSN

MSN is a collection of Internet sites and services provided by Microsoft. The Microsoft Network debuted as an online service and Internet service provider on August 24, 1995, to coincide with the release of the Windows 95 operating system.The range of services offered by MSN has changed since its...

, AOL

AOL

AOL Inc. is an American global Internet services and media company. AOL is headquartered at 770 Broadway in New York. Founded in 1983 as Control Video Corporation, it has franchised its services to companies in several nations around the world or set up international versions of its services...

, Pressplay

Pressplay

Pressplay was the name of an online music store from 2002 - 2003 created as a joint venture between Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment. The two record labels provided music via subscription for pressplay along with BMG, EMI, Warner Music Group and various independent labels. It was...

and Creative Labs, becoming the go-to source for Latin digital music. The company was poised to launch an initial public offering when the Dot-com bubble

Dot-com bubble

The dot-com bubble was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1995–2000 during which stock markets in industrialized nations saw their equity value rise rapidly from growth in the more...

stock market suddenly crashed on April 14, 2000. That event, combined with the emergence of the company Napster

Napster

Napster is an online music store and a Best Buy company. It was originally founded as a pioneering peer-to-peer file sharing Internet service that emphasized sharing audio files that were typically digitally encoded music as MP3 format files...

on the music scene, enabling people to trade music online for free, made it virtually impossible for the company to raise additional venture capital and continue its rapid growth. The company evolved into a distributor of digital music rights and eventually closed down in 2005.

External links

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