Hi, just wondering if someone could shed some light on the exact nature of the licensing relationship here, since Roon displays many album reviews that originated from AllMusic but display in Roon as belonging to TiVo Corporation.
I realize that TiVo (formerly Rovi) acquired AllMusic in 2007, but it was then sold to BlinkX/RhythmOne in 2015. Since TiVo no longer owns the property, I was wondering what’s going on here. Is TiVo continuing to license the metadata from RhythmOne/AllMusic?
Ah I believe I’ve answered my own question. This article covers it: The Story of AllMusic, the Internet’s Largest, Most Influential Music Database
Rovi/TiVo retained the actual database and only the web properties were spun off and purchased by RhythmOne. So at this point AllMusic is licensing the data from TiVo.
FYI, AllMusic uses TiVo’s “US” package of data; Roon uses that, but also their European and UK data.
Great article. I was one of those people who actually bought the All Music books before the internet and now I gladly pay the annual fee to use the site ad free. Before Roon, I used various cataloging software to track my collection and would cut/paste the All Music reviews into my db for future reference.