Internet Underground Music Archive
The Internet Underground Music Archive (IUMA) was an organization that provided a venue for unsigned artists to share their music and communicate with their audience. IUMA is widely recognized as the birthplace of online music. IUMA's goal was to help independent artists use the Internet to distribute their music to fans while circumventing the usual distribution model of using a record company.[1] IUMA was started by Rob Lord, Jeff Patterson and Jon Luini from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1993.[2]
IUMA originally existed as
In 2000, IUMA offered US$5,000 to couples who named their baby "Iuma". Several families took up the offer.[4] IUMA flourished, hosting events such as "Music-o-mania", the largest online "Battle of the Bands" ever held. The winners were given rock star treatment, flown to San Francisco to open for Primus at the Fillmore auditorium.
Early in 2006, the IUMA website disappeared from the Internet. The site had already been closed to new submissions since 2001, when EMusic downsized, eliminating most of the IUMA staff.[5] Despite this setback, much of IUMA's core group continued to work on a "volunteer" basis, in the hopes that IUMA could be resurrected. IUMA was subsequently purchased in 2002 by Vitaminic, an Italian music company.[6]
In late May 2012, Jason Scott (founder of Textfiles.com) announced that much of IUMA's collection has been reposted via the Internet Archive. John Gilmore, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), managed to retrieve the surviving files before its shutdown.[7]
Notes
- ^ Maurer, Wendy. "THE DYNAMICS OF MUSIC DISTRIBUTION". Archived from the original on April 29, 2008. Retrieved April 21, 2008.
- ^ David Pescovitz (August 30, 1995). "It's All Geek to Them; Digital Communes Find a Social Scene in Computers". Business section, The Cutting Edge: COMPUTING / TECHNOLOGY / INNOVATION. Los Angeles Times. p. 1. Archived from the original on July 25, 2012. Retrieved April 21, 2008.
...27-year-old Jon Luini, who co-founded the hip Internet Underground Music Archive (IUMA) in 1993
Alt URL - ^ Boucher, Robert. "IUMA on CNN (3/9/1994)". YouTube. Retrieved April 29, 2008.
- ^ "It's a boy.com! (article on Iuma Dylan-Lucas Thornhill)". BBC. August 17, 2000. Retrieved September 28, 2006.
- ^ "IUMA ceases operations". CD Baby. February 7, 2001. Archived from the original on May 31, 2009. Retrieved June 28, 2006.
- ^ "Digital music provider buys IUMA". CNET. January 2, 2002. Retrieved April 21, 2023.
- GigaOM. Archived from the originalon June 19, 2022. Retrieved January 26, 2024.
External links
- Contents of the IUMA site mirrored at archive.org
- IUMA web site archived at archive.org
- Interview with Jon Luini on the life and death of IUMA