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Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
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Pioneers, champions, Negro Leagues, records, activism and excellence.
Meet the people whose lives, choices and achievements shaped the journey.
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Moments that changed communities, movements, institutions and the nation.
In August 1908, a white mob attacked Springfield, Illinois’s Black community, destroying homes and businesses and lynching two Black men. National outrage over the violence helped spur the movement that created the NAACP the following year.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
| Ritmoteca.com | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Industry | Online music store |
| Founded | 1998 |
| Defunct | 2003 |
| Fate | Self-liquidated |
| Headquarters | Miami, Florida, U.S. |
| Key people | Ivan Parron |
| Products | Downloadable Music |
Number of employees | 200 |
| Website | Ritmoteca.com (no affiliation to current domain holder) |
Ritmoteca.com was an online music store. Founded in Miami, Florida, in 1998 during the Dot-com bubble by Ivan Parron,[1][2] the company was a Latin music download website and an early predecessor to Apple Inc.'s iTunes business model of selling digital music downloads over the Internet.
Ivan Parron founded the company after operating the web development company Internet Marketing Consultants, which designed Ritmoteca's user interface. 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 Latin artists such as Marc Anthony, Tito Puente and Celia Cruz. The company was signed digital distribution agreements with major record labels, signing agreements with Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Bertelsmann Music Group and Warner Music Group. These agreements gave the company digital distribution rights for artists such as U2, Madonna, Britney Spears, Enrique Iglesias and Jay-Z.
The company grew to as many as 200 employees through investments from institutional and "angel" investors including Bain Capital. The company was poised to launch an initial public offering when the Dot-com bubble stock market suddenly crashed on April 14, 2000. That event, combined with the emergence of the company Napster on the music scene, enabling people to trade music online for free, made it virtually impossible for the company to raise additional venture capital. The company evolved into a distributor of digital music rights and eventually closed down in 2005.
Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
Ritmoteca.com was an online music store. Founded in Miami, Florida, in 1998 during the Dot-com bubble by Ivan Parron, the company was a Latin music download website and an early predecessor to Apple Inc.'s iTunes business model of selling digital music downloads over the Internet. Ivan Parron founded the company after operating the web development company Internet Marketing Consultants, which designed Ritmoteca's user interface. 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 Latin artists such as Marc Anthony, Tito Puente and Celia Cruz. The company was signed digital distribution agreements with major record labels, signing agreements with Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Bertelsmann Music Group and Warner Music Group. These agreements gave the company digital distribution rights for artists such as U2, Madonna, Britney Spears, Enrique Iglesias and Jay-Z. The company grew to as many as 200 employees through investments from institutional and "angel" investors including Bain Capital. The company was poised to launch an initial public offering when the Dot-com bubble stock market suddenly crashed on April 14, 2000. That event, combined with the emergence of the company Napster on the music scene, enabling people to trade music online for free, made it virtually impossible for the company to raise additional venture capital. The company evolved into a distributor of digital music rights and eventually closed down in 2005.
The dot-com bubble (or dot-com boom) was a stock market bubble that developed during the late 1990s and peaked on March 10, 2000. This period of market growth coincided with the widespread adoption of the World Wide Web and the Internet, resulting in a dispensation of available venture capital and the rapid growth of valuations in new dot-com startups. Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, investments in the Nasdaq Composite stock market index rose by 600%, only to fall 78% from its peak by October 2002, giving up all its gains during the bubble. During the dot-com crash, many online shopping companies like Pets.com, Webvan, and Boo.com, as well as several communication companies, such as WorldCom, NorthPoint Communications, and Global Crossing, failed and shut down; WorldCom was renamed to MCI Inc. in 2003 and was acquired by Verizon in 2006. Others, like Lastminute.com, MP3.com and PeopleSound were bought out. Larger companies like Amazon and Cisco Systems lost large portions of their market capitalization, with the latter losing 80% of its stock value.
Boo.com was a short-lived British e-commerce business, founded in 1998 by Swedes Ernst Malmsten, Kajsa Leander and Patrik Hedelin, who were regarded as sophisticated Internet entrepreneurs in Europe by the investors because they had created an online bookstore named Bokus.com, the third largest book e-retailer (in 1997), before founding boo.com. The company had its headquarters along Carnaby Street in London and initially had 40 employees. In October 1999, it had eight offices and 400 employees in Amsterdam, Munich, New York City, Paris, and Stockholm. After several highly publicized delays, Boo.com launched in the autumn of 1999 selling branded fashion apparel on the Internet. The company spent $135 million of venture capital in just 18 months, and was placed into receivership on 18 May 2000 and liquidated. It relaunched in the autumn of 2000 with Kate Buggeln, an ex-Bloomingdale's salesperson and Internet consultant, as president. She told Women's Wear Daily that they were working to "expand beyond the portal business model into Boo products and Boo licensing." In June 2008, CNET hailed Boo.com as one of the greatest dot-com busts in history. Malmsten wrote about the experience in his book Boo Hoo: A dot.com Story from Concept to Catastrophe, published in 2001.
Pets.com was an American dot-com enterprise headquartered in San Francisco, California, that sold pet supplies to retail customers. The website was launched in November 1998 and was shut down in November 2000. A high-profile marketing campaign gave it a widely recognized public presence, including an appearance in the 1999 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and an advertisement in the 2000 Super Bowl. Its popular sock puppet advertising mascot was interviewed by People magazine and appeared on Good Morning America. Although sales rose dramatically due to the attention, the company failed to become profitable and became known as one of the biggest victims of the dot-com crash in 2000. Since 2001, the Pets.com domain has redirected to PetSmart's website.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Madam C.J. Walker
