VyRT was an American provider of
on-demand Internet
streaming media
Streaming media is multimedia that is delivered and consumed in a continuous manner from a source, with little or no intermediate storage in network elements. ''Streaming'' refers to the delivery method of content, rather than the content i ...
available to viewers worldwide. The company was established in late 2011 and was headquartered in
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world ...
, California. VyRT was founded by entertainer
Jared Leto
Jared Joseph Leto ( ; born December 26, 1971) is an American actor and musician. Known for his method acting in a variety of roles, he has received numerous accolades over a career spanning three decades, including an Academy Award and a Gold ...
as a website for hosting online events, but soon diversified into featuring
digital distribution
Digital distribution, also referred to as content delivery, online distribution, or electronic software distribution, among others, is the delivery or distribution of digital media content such as audio, video, e-books, video games, and other s ...
and
online shopping
Online shopping is a form of electronic commerce which allows consumers to directly buy goods or services from a seller over the Internet using a web browser or a mobile app. Consumers find a product of interest by visiting the website of t ...
. It also included
social networking
A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for ...
.
By 2015, VyRT was receiving 3.5 million requests per minute and had surpassed 5,000 subscribers. Many of its live events became worldwide
trending topics.
History
VyRT was established in late 2011 as a
startup company
A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship refers to all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that never intend ...
by entertainer
Jared Leto
Jared Joseph Leto ( ; born December 26, 1971) is an American actor and musician. Known for his method acting in a variety of roles, he has received numerous accolades over a career spanning three decades, including an Academy Award and a Gold ...
. His aim was to let musicians create live experiences and broadcast them on the Internet, with the ability to share their work without having to rely on the prevailing sponsor-based model. Its inception came from some frustrating experiences Leto faced with American rock band
Thirty Seconds to Mars
Thirty Seconds to Mars (commonly stylized as 30 Seconds to Mars) is an American rock band from Los Angeles, California, formed in 1998. The band consists of brothers Jared Leto (lead vocals, guitar, bass, keyboards) and Shannon Leto (drums, ...
in streaming their own live events.
On December 7, 2011, VyRT streamed the Tribus Centum Numerarae, the 300th show of the
Into the Wild Tour
The Into the Wild Tour (also known as Hurricane Tour and the Closer to the Edge Tour) was the second worldwide concert tour by American rock band Thirty Seconds to Mars in support of the band's third studio album, This Is War. The tour reached ...
by Thirty Seconds to Mars, which garnered the band the
Guinness World Record
''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a reference book published annually, listing world ...
for most live shows during a single album cycle. The show marked the launch of VyRT as an online platform. At the 2012
O Music Awards
The O Music Awards (commonly abbreviated as the OMAs) is an awards show presented by MTV to honor music, technology and intersection between the two. The 1st O Music Award ceremony was held on April 28, 2011 on Fremont Street in Downtown Las Veg ...
in June, it was awarded Best Online Concert Experience.
After the first streamed events, VyRT transitioned to a new site, expanding to
digital distribution
Digital distribution, also referred to as content delivery, online distribution, or electronic software distribution, among others, is the delivery or distribution of digital media content such as audio, video, e-books, video games, and other s ...
and
online shopping
Online shopping is a form of electronic commerce which allows consumers to directly buy goods or services from a seller over the Internet using a web browser or a mobile app. Consumers find a product of interest by visiting the website of t ...
, selling
video
Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving visual media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, which were quickly replaced by cathode-ray tube (CRT) sy ...
downloads/streaming,
MP3
MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...
downloads/streaming, and
e-book
An ebook (short for electronic book), also known as an e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. A ...
s. It also began to feature
social networking
A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for ...
. The team rebuilt the website in
Ruby on Rails
Ruby on Rails (simplified as Rails) is a server-side web application framework written in Ruby under the MIT License. Rails is a model–view–controller (MVC) framework, providing default structures for a database, a web service, and we ...
and expanded its capacity on
Heroku
Heroku is a cloud platform as a service (PaaS) supporting several programming languages. One of the first cloud platforms, Heroku has been in development since June 2007, when it supported only the Ruby programming language, but now supports Jav ...
.
An official store featuring merchandise,
DVDs,
book
A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physical ...
s, and apparel was also launched. The artists featured on VyRT included
Gerard Way
Gerard Arthur Way (born April 9, 1977) is an American singer, songwriter, and comic book writer. He is best known as the lead vocalist and co-founder of the rock band My Chemical Romance. He released his debut solo album, ''Hesitant Alien'', ...
,
Linkin Park
Linkin Park is an American rock band from Agoura Hills, California. The band's current lineup comprises vocalist/rhythm guitarist/keyboardist Mike Shinoda, lead guitarist Brad Delson, bassist Dave Farrell, DJ/turntablist Joe Hahn and drumm ...
,
Greek Fire
Greek fire was an incendiary weapon used by the Eastern Roman Empire beginning . Used to set fire to enemy ships, it consisted of a combustible compound emitted by a flame-throwing weapon. Some historians believe it could be ignited on contact w ...
,
Ryan Beatty
Ryan Kevin Beatty (born September 25, 1995) is an American singer-songwriter. He was born in Clovis, California, and now resides in Los Angeles.
His debut EP, ''Because of You'', was released in 2012. After a hiatus, Beatty began to majorly re- ...
,
The Janoskians
The Janoskians (Just another name of silly kids in another nation) are a YouTube comedy group from Melbourne, Australia. The group consists of elder brother Beau Brooks, twins Luke and Jai Brooks, and friends Daniel Sahyounie and James Yammouni ...
,
Ryan Cabrera
Ryan Frank Cabrera ( ) (born July 18, 1982) is an American musician. He began his career as a lead singer for the Dallas band Rubix Groove before pursuing his solo career. Following the 2001 release of independent album '' Elm St.'', he released ...
, the
Jonas Brothers
The Jonas Brothers () are an American pop rock band. Formed in 2005, they gained popularity from their appearances on the Disney Channel television network. They consist of three brothers: Kevin Jonas, Joe Jonas, and Nick Jonas. Raised in ...
, Boy Epic,
Ivy Levan
Ivy Rose Levan (born January 20, 1987) is an American singer, songwriter, model and actress from Bentonville, Arkansas. At 16, Levan moved to Los Angeles to pursue a music career, eventually signing to Cherrytree Records and Interscope Records. ...
, and
Brendan Brazier. Later, it began to stream films, beginning on August 31, 2013 with special screenings of the documentary film ''
Artifact'' (2012), followed by the psychological horror film ''
The Shining'' (1980) on February 9, 2014.
In August 2014, it was announced that VyRT would exclusively broadcast worldwide the performance from the
Carnivores Tour
The Carnivores Tour was a co-headlining concert tour by American rock bands Linkin Park and Thirty Seconds to Mars. It was launched in support of Linkin Park's sixth studio album '' The Hunting Party'' (2014) and Thirty Seconds to Mars' fourth st ...
by Linkin Park and Thirty Seconds to Mars, scheduled on September 15 at the
Hollywood Bowl
The Hollywood Bowl is an amphitheatre in the Hollywood Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. It was named one of the 10 best live music venues in America by ''Rolling Stone'' magazine in 2018.
The Hollywood Bowl is known for its distin ...
in Los Angeles. Before Thirty Seconds to Mars took to the stage, the VyRT platform was hacked. Jared Leto was forced to delay the performance by Thirty Seconds to Mars by an hour to resolve the issue. The audience eventually lost approximately three minutes of actual stage time, but the set list was shortened. Leto later claimed that a "piracy stream" was responsible.
The event included "real-time social community engagement from audiences worldwide".
In November 2014, the documentary series ''
Into the Wild'' premiered on VyRT. The series was produced by Jared Leto and Emma Ludbrook through the production company Sisyphus Corporation. In May 2015, VyRT premiered episode one of indie pop musician Boy Epic's docuseries ''Telling Secrets'' in response to a Mars fan campaign to get him on the platform after he made a song inspired by ''
Suicide Squad
The Suicide Squad is an antihero/supervillain team appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. The first version of the Suicide Squad debuted in ''The Brave and the Bold'' #25 (September 1959) and the second and modern version, cre ...
'' (2016). Further episodes weren't released for unknown reasons. On October 9, 2016, Thirty Seconds to Mars exclusively released ''Camp Mars: The Concert Film'' on VyRT. The film was directed by Leto, documenting the first Camp Mars event in 2015.
By 2020, VyRT was still open but not receiving new livestreams or VOD content, with the last major livestream being an AT&T sponsored concert live from the third annual Camp Mars event in Malibu on August 12, 2017. The event itself was hosted on AT&T's website and their Facebook Live. An initially planned partnership with
Fandor
Fandor is a film streaming service, dedicated to independent films, documentaries, international titles, and classics, and is a division of the American entertainment company, Cinedigm. Relaunched in 2021, Fandor offers thousands of films, rangi ...
, announced as part of Leto becoming Chief Creative Officer of the platform on May 21, 2017, never came to fruition. Mars fans still used the site to communicate with other fans and host watch parties for VyRT VODs, with some hosted officially by VyRT. In December 2020, the site redirected to a page on the official Thirty Seconds to Mars website formally announcing the end of the platform, thanking the user base and hinting at a new project from the same team.
Services
The VyRT website featured a main page, Live, and Vault, as well as a series of personal pages. The Live sections provided live
streaming
Streaming media is multimedia that is delivered and consumed in a continuous manner from a source, with little or no intermediate storage in network elements. ''Streaming'' refers to the delivery method of content, rather than the content i ...
events as well as
social networking
A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for ...
. Users logged into their accounts during the broadcast and could chat with others via a live feed. The interaction window allowed users to quote, invite, reply, or find other users' profiles. Artists could also interact with users on the live feed.
The Vault sections consisted of all available events for purchase, including streaming and
downloads
In computer networks, download means to ''receive'' data from a remote system, typically a server such as a web server, an FTP server, an email server, or other similar system. This contrasts with uploading, where data is ''sent to'' a remote ...
.
Livestreams were traditionally referred to as VyRTs, with ReVyRTs referring to rebroadcasts of livestreams. The service also hosted VyRT Violets, less professionally produced impromptu video chats, similar to what would later become Instagram Live.
VyRT didn't utilize proprietary services, instead favoring
white label
A white label record is a vinyl record with white labels attached. There are several variations each with a different purpose. Variations include test pressings, white label promos, and plain white labels.
Test pressings
Test pressings, usua ...
livestreaming platforms, online payment providers, and chat clients. The
Bootstrap UI was used to provide an ad-free and easily customizable interface for artists.
Ustream
IBM Watson Media (formerly Ustream and IBM Cloud Video) is an American virtual events platform company which is a division of IBM. Prior to IBM acquisition, it had more than 180 employees across San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Budapest offices. ...
was used for the first MARS300 broadcast.
It is unknown if Thirty Seconds to Mars or others that held events on the platform plan to re-release Vault VOD content elsewhere after VyRT's closing.
See also
*
List of streaming media systems
A ''list'' is any set of items in a row. List or lists may also refer to:
People
* List (surname)
Organizations
* List College, an undergraduate division of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America
* SC Germania List, German rugby unio ...
References
External links
*
{{Thirty Seconds to Mars
2011 establishments in California
Companies based in Los Angeles
Internet properties established in 2011
Jared Leto
Online music stores of the United States
Social networking services
Defunct video on demand services
Video on demand services