LAUNCH Media is a Santa Monica-based media company that created LAUNCH.com, an online music site, and LAUNCH (magazine), a magazine

Magazine

Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...

 issued both in print and as a CD-ROM

CD-ROM

A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....

 disk magazine

Disk magazine

A disk magazine, colloquially known as a diskmag, is a magazine that is distributed in electronic form to be read using computers. These had some popularity in the 1980s and 1990s as periodicals distributed on floppy disk, hence their name...

. LAUNCH Media was acquired by Yahoo!

Yahoo!

Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...

 for US$12 million in 2001. The features of LAUNCH.com, including the LAUNCHcast

LAUNCHcast

Yahoo! Music Radio is an Internet radio service offered by CBS Radio through Yahoo! Music. The service, formerly offered by LAUNCH Media, and originally developed by Todd Beaupré and Jeff Boulter, debuted on November 11, 1999, and was purchased by Yahoo! in October, 2001...

 Internet Radio

Internet radio

Internet radio is an audio service transmitted via the Internet...

 service, were later integrated into Yahoo! Music

Yahoo! Music

Yahoo! Music, owned by Yahoo!, is the provider of a variety of music services, including Internet radio, music videos, news, artist information, and original programming...

.

History

Previously referred to simply as "LAUNCH", LAUNCH Media began as the publisher of LAUNCH, a magazine issued in both standard print format and as an interactive CD-ROM. Eventually the print version was eliminated and subscribers were sent only the CD-ROM version. LAUNCH magazine disks were often found pre-packaged with new PCs

Personal computer

A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...

 in the late 1990s.

LAUNCH magazine contained video interviews, live performances, and special video segments by music stars as well as standard (but interactive) music magazine features.

LAUNCH Media later introduced LAUNCH.com, the official LAUNCH magazine website. The site featured LAUNCH magazine content, music video

Music video

A music video or song video is a short film integrating a song and imagery, produced for promotional or artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings...

s, and, beginning in 1999, LAUNCHcast Internet radio.

The company was purchased by Yahoo! for US$12 million in 2001. LAUNCH.com was later integrated into Yahoo! Music.

At the time of its acquisition, LAUNCH was in a legal battle with the recording industry over LAUNCHcast, which the industry claimed provided an "unapproved level of interactivity". LAUNCH pulled LAUNCHcast from LAUNCH.com, then later restarted it with a reduced catalog. Yahoo! later acquired LAUNCH as a subsidiary to avoid being dragged into the recording industry's lawsuit, but was dragged into it anyway. On April 27, 2007, Yahoo! defeated a Sony BMG copyright infringement lawsuit over LAUNCHcast.