The Orchard is an American music and entertainment company, specializing in media distribution, marketing, and sales. It is a subsidiary of

Sony Music Sony Music Entertainment (SME), also known as simply Sony Music, is an American multinational music company. Being owned by the parent conglomerate Sony Group Corporation, it is part of the Sony Music Group, which is owned by Sony Entertainme ...

, based in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

. In 2019, the company sold off its film and television division, which was renamed

1091 Media 1091 Pictures is an American film studio based in New York City and Los Angeles. The company was founded as the film and television division subsidiary of The Orchard in 2015. The company is best known for the Oscar-nominated films '' Life, An ...

History

Founding

The company was founded in 1997 by Scott Cohen and

Richard Gottehrer Richard Gottehrer (born 1940) is an American songwriter, record producer and record label executive. In 1997, he co-founded the Orchard with longtime business partner Scott Cohen, an independent music distribution company. His career began as ...

Dimensional Associates Acquisition

In early 2003, The Orchard was bought by Dimensional Associates. Danny Stein, the CEO of Dimensional Associates, was appointed Executive Chairman, and Greg Scholl left management consulting firm McKinsey & Company to become The Orchard's CEO, changing its strategy and operating model and building a new management team. In 2009, The Orchard was named the 66th-fastest growing company in North America for the five-year period from 2004 to 2009. In 2009, Scholl accepted a position as president, Local Integrated Media at

NBCUniversal NBCUniversal Media, LLC is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate corporation owned by Comcast and headquartered at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, United States. NBCUniversal is primaril ...

and Brad Navin was appointed CEO. In 2012,

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professiona ...

acquired a majority stake of 51% in the company in a cash and equity deal with an estimated total valuation of $100 million. In 2015, the remaining equity in the company was acquired by

Sony Music Entertainment Sony Music Entertainment (SME), also known as simply Sony Music, is an American multinational music company. Being owned by the parent conglomerate Sony Group Corporation, it is part of the Sony Music Group, which is owned by Sony Entertainmen ...

for over $200 million.

Clients

Its clients include independent artists and labels such as

Johnny & Associates is a Japanese talent agency, formed by Johnny Kitagawa in 1962, which trains and promotes groups of male entertainers known as . History 1962–1989 In 1962, Kitagawa launched his first group, Johnnys. In its early days, Kitagawa's agency re ...

JYP Entertainment JYP Entertainment Corporation () is a South Korean multinational entertainment and record label conglomerate founded in 1997 by J. Y. Park. It is one of the largest entertainment companies in South Korea, and operates as a record label, tale ...

, Daptone Records,

Cleopatra Records Cleopatra Records is an American independent record label based in Los Angeles, California. It was founded in 1992 by Brian Perera. The record label has since grown into a family of labels, including Hypnotic Records, Purple Pyramid Records, D ...

, and

Frenchkiss Records Frenchkiss Records is an independent record label based in New York City. The label was started in 1999 by Syd Butler, bassist and founder of Les Savy Fav. The label's first purpose was to release Les Savy Fav's second album ''The Cat and The Cobr ...

, who partnered with The Orchard in 2012 to create Frenchkiss Label Group in addition to their digital and physical deals with the company. In 2014, the partnership expanded even further when The Orchard acquired

outright. The company also licenses music for use in advertising, television and film.

Heineken Heineken Lager Beer ( nl, Heineken Pilsener), or simply Heineken () is a pale lager beer with 5% alcohol by volume produced by the Dutch brewing company Heineken N.V. Heineken beer is sold in a green bottle with a red star. History On 15 Feb ...

Target Target may refer to: Physical items * Shooting target, used in marksmanship training and various shooting sports ** Bullseye (target), the goal one for which one aims in many of these sports ** Aiming point, in field artillery, f ...

Southern Comfort Southern Comfort (often abbreviated SoCo) is an American, naturally fruit-flavored, whiskey liqueur with fruit and spice accents. The brand was created by bartender Martin Wilkes Heron in New Orleans in 1874, using whiskey as the base spirit. W ...

, and the LU family of brands have used songs from The Orchard's catalogue in their advertisements. The Black Angels' "Yellow Elevator #2" and

The Raveonettes The Raveonettes are a Danish indie rock duo, consisting of Sune Rose Wagner on guitar, instruments and vocals, and Sharin Foo on bass, guitar and vocals. Their music is characterized by close two-part vocal harmonies inspired by The Everly Br ...

' "Aly, Walk With Me" were featured on ''

True Blood ''True Blood'' is an American fantasy horror drama television series produced and created by Alan Ball. It is based on '' The Southern Vampire Mysteries'', a series of novels by Charlaine Harris. A reboot is currently in development. The ser ...

'',

Frankie Avalon Francis Thomas Avallone (born September 18, 1940), better known as Frankie Avalon, is an American actor, singer, and former teen idol. He had 31 charting U.S. ''Billboard'' singles from 1958 to late 1962, including number one hits, "Venus" an ...

's "Venus" was played on '' Dexter,'' the

Dum Dum Girls Dum Dum Girls was an American rock band, formed in 2008. It began as the bedroom recording project of singer and songwriter Dee Dee (née Kristin Gundred). She is currently based in Los Angeles. The name is a double homage to the Vaselines' al ...

' "Coming Down" and

Kina Grannis Kina Kasuya Grannis (born August 4, 1985) is an American guitarist, singer and YouTuber. Grannis was the winner of the 2008 Doritos Crash the Super Bowl contest, earning a recording contract with Interscope Records and having her music video ...

’ "The One You Say Goodnight To" were heard on season 5 of ''

Gossip Girl ''Gossip Girl'' is an American teen drama television series based on the novel series of the same name written by Cecily von Ziegesar. The series, developed for television by Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, ran on The CW network for six sea ...

'' and various artists from The Orchard's catalog were heard throughout Season 2 of

Vice A vice is a practice, behaviour, or habit generally considered immoral, sinful, criminal, rude, taboo, depraved, degrading, deviant or perverted in the associated society. In more minor usage, vice can refer to a fault, a negative character t ...

on HBO. Songs distributed by The Orchard that have made it into film soundtracks include

Faye Adams Faye Adams (born Fanny Tuell, May 22, 1923) is an American singer who recorded and performed rhythm and blues and gospel from the late 1940s until the early 1960s. She had several chart hits in the early 1950s, before retiring from the music b ...

' "Hurts Me To My Heart" and Mozart's "Rondo No. 2 in C Major for Violin and Orchestra, K.373: Allegretto Grazioso" in

Lee Daniels Lee Daniels (born December 24, 1959) is an American film and television producer, director and screenwriter. His first producer credit was ''Monster's Ball'' (2001), for which Halle Berry won the Academy Award for Best Actress, making Daniels ...

' ''

The Butler ''The Butler'' (full title ''Lee Daniels' The Butler'') is a 2013 American historical drama film directed and co-produced by Lee Daniels and with a screenplay by Danny Strong. It is inspired by Wil Haygood's ''Washington Post'' article "A But ...

'' The Red Army Choir of Alexandrov's "Soviet National Anthem" in '' X-Men: First Class'',

's classic "Swingin' on a Rainbow" in ''

The Help ''The Help'' is a historical fiction novel by American author Kathryn Stockett and published by Penguin Books in 2009. The story is about African Americans working in white households in Jackson, Mississippi, during the early 1960s. A ''USA To ...

'' and Macon Greyson's "Black Light" in '' The Wrestler.'' On June 1, 2017, Sony Music announced that it would merge

RED Distribution RED Music, stylized RED MUSIC, formerly RED Distribution, LLC (Relativity Entertainment Distribution) was a Sony-owned sales and marketing division that merged under The Orchard in 2017. RED previously handled releases for more than sixty i ...

and Red Essential into The Orchard, which would have a U.S. market share of 6% with $350 million in annual revenue.The Orchard and Red Essential Merge
theorchard.com June 1, 2017, Retrieved on June 12, 2017 In February 2019, co-founder Scott Cohen retired from The Orchard and joined the senior management team at

Warner Music Group Warner Music Group Corp. ( d.b.a. Warner Music Group, commonly abbreviated as WMG) is an American multinational entertainment and record label conglomerate headquartered in New York City. It is one of the " big three" recording companies and t ...

IODA

IODA (Independent Online Distribution Alliance) was a global sales, marketing and distribution company with majority stake owned by

. The subsidiary serviced independent artists, labels, filmmakers and other content providers on digital and mobile outlets, including making copyright claims on online content. Founded in 2003, IODA provided various distribution, marketing, publishing and administrative services to selected independent record labels, physical distributors, video companies, recording artists, filmmakers, print media publishers and independent authors, including license negotiations, media encoding and metadata management, royalty payment administration and reporting, and marketing and promotional support. IODA had relationships with major mobile and online download retailers including iTunes,

eMusic eMusic is an online music and audiobook store that operates by subscription. In exchange for a monthly subscription eMusic users can download a fixed number of MP3 tracks per month. eMusic was established in 1998, is headquartered in New York C ...

, Rhapsody and

Amazon.com Amazon.com, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational technology company focusing on e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. It has been referred to as "one of the most influential econo ...

. On July 1, 2009,

and IODA announced their global strategic partnership to leverage combined worldwide online retail distribution networks and complementary technologies to support independent labels and music rightsholders. On March 5, 2012, Sony acquired the remaining stake of IODA. The company's operations were merged with the Orchard.

YouTube programming

The Orchard's YouTube

multi-channel network A multi-channel network (MCN) is an organization that works with video platforms to offer assistance to a channel owner in areas such as "product, programming, funding, cross-promotion, partner management, digital rights management, monetizat ...

has more than 1,000 channels across the globe and uses technology, built in-house, called B.A.C.O.N. (Bulk Automated Claiming on The Orchard Network) to crawl, claim and track YouTube videos to monetize for their clients. It was ranked 7th in the U.S. in July 2014. YouTube users have expressed concerns about The Orchard claiming copyright ownership of music used in user-generated content that may or may not belong to them. According to an article by The Orchard on their Daily Rind blog, if audio is matched to a particular copyright owner via YouTube's content identification system, then one or more links will be placed under the video in order to help promote the copyright owner's music, with the video remaining available. The article states that erroneous claims are removed by The Orchard Team after review upon email communication with their dispute department. However, they are not timely in their response, which leads some YouTube users (or copyright/original content owners/creators) to believe The Orchard is attempting to acquire AdSense revenue falsely from claims that go undisputed. The Orchard along with Rumblefish Inc. was subject to a 2019 copyfraud dispute regarding a public domain performance by the United States Navy Band uploaded onto YouTube. A 2019 case study noted examples of The Orchard selling music works and digital ad revenue online without permission of the artists in the 2010 case ''Bryant v. Media Right Productions, Inc.''

Distributed labels

The Orchard owns the catalogues of

TVT Records TVT Records (Tee-Vee Tunes) was an American record label founded by Steve Gottlieb. Over the course of its 24-year history, the label released 25 Gold, Platinum and Multi-Platinum releases. Its roster included Nine Inch Nails, Ja Rule, Lil Jon, ...

, Premium Latin Music (home to Aventura),

Blind Pig Records Blind Pig Records is an American blues independent record label. Blind Pig was formed in 1977 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, by Jerry Del Giudice, owner of the Blind Pig Cafe, and his friend Edward Chmelewski. The label is now based in San Francisco. I ...

, ViiiZUALEYES MEDIA GROUP & RECORDINGS INC.,

, Mexican label Discos Joey,

JDub Records JDub Records was a non-profit record and event production company that produced Jewish music and cross cultural musical dialogue. JDub, unlike most record labels, derived half its annual income from foundations and individual donors and the other ...

Music of the World Music of the World is a World music record label that was active from 1982 to 2000. The company produced over 100 CDs and cassettes of traditional and contemporary artists from around the world. Nomad and Latitudes were imprint labels. ''Music o ...

Xanadu Records Xanadu Records was a jazz record label founded in 1975 by Don Schlitten. It was most active during the 1970s and 1980s and stopped recording in the 1990s. The catalogue was bought by emusic in 1999, but no new music was produced. In 2007, the cat ...

, and Shrapnel Records. Some of the better known record labels distributed by The Orchard are

Fat Possum Records Fat Possum Records is an American independent record label based in Water Valley and Oxford, Mississippi. At first Fat Possum focused almost entirely on recording previously unknown Mississippi blues artists (typically from Oxford or Holly Sprin ...

, Murk Nature Records,

Atypeek Music Atypeek Music is an international digital label, which resulted from the association of Go Get Organized (GGO) and Agony. GGO is one of the last French alternative labels (1988 – 1993). The name of the label Go Get Organized comes from a song b ...

, Bindelari Music, Birthday Cake Media, Tilt Music Production, WhoMag, Black River Entertainment,

Smithsonian Folkways Smithsonian Folkways is the nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian Institution. It is a part of the Smithsonian's Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, located at Capital Gallery in downtown Washington, D.C. The label was fo ...

, Eclipse Records, Electronic Arts Music, Frontiers Records,

Heaven Music Heaven Music is an independent record label in Athens, Greece, founded in 2001 by ANT1 Group. It is known for signing new and young artists. Overview During its first five years of operation under the control of George Levendis, Heaven Music wa ...

, Sunrise Music Label, Casanova Records, Castro Music, Hope Music Group,

InVogue Records InVogue Records is an American record company based in Findlay, Ohio. It was founded by Nick Moore, lead singer of Before Their Eyes, in 2009. In the fall of 2011 InVogue Records signed a distribution deal with Independent Label Group (owned by ...

, Lakeshore Records, MCFL Entertainment,

Lamon Records Lamon Records is an indie record label that was established in North Carolina before moving to Nashville, Tennessee. Lamon Records concentrates its efforts in country, bluegrass, alternative and Americana music, as well as all forms of Christi ...

, Lojinx, LRC/ Groove Merchant,

Mystic Records Mystic Records is an American record label and music production company specializing in hardcore punk, crossover thrash, underground music, vintage and cult records. It is owned and operated by Doug Moody. The label was first established in Hollywo ...

, Heavy Pen Entertainment, Hot Panda Media,

Napalm Records Napalm Records is an Austrian independent record label focused on heavy metal and hard rock. Originally, Napalm focused on black metal bands, such as Abigor and Summoning, and folk metal bands, such as Falkenbach and Vintersorg. The label l ...

Pure Noise Records Pure Noise Records is an American punk rock record label based in Nashville, Tennessee. It was founded by Jake Round in 2009 while he was an editor at '' AMP''; the previous fall, friends of his in the band No Bragging Rights told him they were ...

Robbins Entertainment Robbins Entertainment is an American dance music record label. It is owned by Cory Robbins and has released music by Cascada, such as their hit single " Everytime We Touch". It is also the company responsible for the ''Dance Party Like It's....'' ...

, Relapse Records, Southern Fried Records, Ruby Recordings, Cain Empire Records,

The Spicy Effect The Spicy Effect, commonly referred to as Spicy or Spicy Music, is a Greek independent record label founded in 2009 by songwriter and record producer Phoebus, in association with the investment arm of Nea Tileorasi. Overview After eight years ...

Third Man Records Third Man Records is an eclectic, vinyl-focused independent record label founded and owned by Jack White, Ben Blackwell and Ben Swank. The company operates out of three locations—Nashville, Tennessee, Detroit, Michigan, and Soho, London—with ...

, ARY Records, Flo & Eddie inc,

J Storm is a Japanese music and film company owned by Johnny & Associates. It was established on November 12, 2001, initially as a label for the Johnny's group, Arashi, after which it was named. Aside from producing and releasing CDs and DVDs, the co ...

, and Concore Entertainment.

Film distribution

In 2019, the Orchard Film was sold and renamed

BalconyTV

BalconyTV is an online music channel launched in June 2006, featuring acoustic performances on balconies around the world. In 2007, it won Best Music Website at the Irish Digital Media Awards, and was nominated for Best Viral Video Content at the

Webby Award The Webby Awards are awards for excellence on the Internet presented annually by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a judging body composed of over two thousand industry experts and technology innovators. Categories includ ...

s in 2008.(April 11, 2008). "BalconyTV nominated for Webby Award", ''

The Irish Times ''The Irish Times'' is an Irish daily broadsheet newspaper and online digital publication. It launched on 29 March 1859. The editor is Ruadhán Mac Cormaic. It is published every day except Sundays. ''The Irish Times'' is considered a newspaper ...

'', p. 7. Since then, the channel has expanded to hosting over 12,000 shows in over 50 cities, and more than 25 countries. The channel was acquired by The Orchard in 2014.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Orchard 1997 establishments in New York City American companies established in 1997 American record labels Digital audio distributors Record label distributors Record labels established in 1997 Sony Music Entertainment companies based in New York City 2003 mergers and acquisitions 2012 mergers and acquisitions