History
“Hmmm, radio on the internet. That’s cool. Now what?”
In October of 1999, the founders of MediaUnbound first flipped the streaming switch at WHRB-FM — Harvard University’s student radio station. Sure, webcasting to the world was pretty exciting, but it wasn’t like our mothers were sitting around listening to music using a computer. What steps were needed to make digital music a mainstream media — as easy as switching on the radio?
We founded MediaUnbound a few months later in January of 2000 to provide part of the answer. As listeners gain access to large catalogs of digital music, they need efficient ways to find forgotten favorites, discover new gems, and explore the long tail. Content providers who invest heavily in deep catalogs and customer acquisition seek to build healthy, trusted relationships with their listeners while continually offering
exciting musical experiences. Communities of media fans want an easy
way to connect with like-minded users from whom they
can interact and learn about new content. MediaUnbound makes exploring
digital media an enjoyable and social experience by solving these problems.
Starting in the summer of 2000, MediaUnbound initiated a series of music recommendation experiments. In-house teams of ten music analysts conducted detailed 30 minute interviews with a variety of listeners. Based on their research, the analysts collaboratively built recommended playlists “personalized” for each listener. Our goal: recreate this personalization process such that it is scalable and can be done in real-time for a large body of listeners and for massive catalogs of extremely diverse music.
The approach resulted in us formally modeling not merely listeners or music alone, but the complex and meaningful perception that occurs when a person listens to music. Instead of implementing a silver-bullet technology, MediaUnbound mixes multiple algorithms, unique technical approaches, and
the expertise of an in-house team of music and media analysts
to create a variety of recommendation and personalization products.
In the years since our original research on music, we have expanded our approach to other entertainment content domains such as video, ringtones, images, books (both audio and dead-tree) and games. We strongly believe high-quality recommendations require a domain-specific approach, and have created a framework for quickly adding new content domains to the MediaUnbound Personalization Platform.
MediaUnbound is a privately held company headquartered in Cambridge, MA with personnel in the UK, Germany, and Japan. With ring-side seats to the dot-com meltdown, MediaUnbound has been profitable since 2003. The company is exclusively focused on licensing its technology to digital media providers and does not offer services directly to consumers.
In October of 1999, the founders of MediaUnbound first flipped the streaming switch at WHRB-FM — Harvard University’s student radio station. Sure, webcasting to the world was pretty exciting, but it wasn’t like our mothers were sitting around listening to music using a computer. What steps were needed to make digital music a mainstream media — as easy as switching on the radio?
We founded MediaUnbound a few months later in January of 2000 to provide part of the answer. As listeners gain access to large catalogs of digital music, they need efficient ways to find forgotten favorites, discover new gems, and explore the long tail. Content providers who invest heavily in deep catalogs and customer acquisition seek to build healthy, trusted relationships with their listeners while continually offering
 |
Starting in the summer of 2000, MediaUnbound initiated a series of music recommendation experiments. In-house teams of ten music analysts conducted detailed 30 minute interviews with a variety of listeners. Based on their research, the analysts collaboratively built recommended playlists “personalized” for each listener. Our goal: recreate this personalization process such that it is scalable and can be done in real-time for a large body of listeners and for massive catalogs of extremely diverse music.
The approach resulted in us formally modeling not merely listeners or music alone, but the complex and meaningful perception that occurs when a person listens to music. Instead of implementing a silver-bullet technology, MediaUnbound mixes multiple algorithms, unique technical approaches, and
 |
In the years since our original research on music, we have expanded our approach to other entertainment content domains such as video, ringtones, images, books (both audio and dead-tree) and games. We strongly believe high-quality recommendations require a domain-specific approach, and have created a framework for quickly adding new content domains to the MediaUnbound Personalization Platform.
MediaUnbound is a privately held company headquartered in Cambridge, MA with personnel in the UK, Germany, and Japan. With ring-side seats to the dot-com meltdown, MediaUnbound has been profitable since 2003. The company is exclusively focused on licensing its technology to digital media providers and does not offer services directly to consumers.
