Summary/Introduction:
Emperor Multimedia is a privately owned Ontario, Canada registered limited liability Corporation founded in October of 1998 that specializes in multimedia production and services for the entertainment, hospitality & educational industries. Our principle products and services include PDF (E-book) production, e-commerce, web design, CD-ROM production, audio conversion, audio recording & music sales. Outside of various stock & bond holdings for companies in the Healthcare, Entertainment, Electronics & Software, and Banking industries, Emperor holds its own assets in E-commerce, PDF, web & application programming, music retail & internet audio broadcasting.
Our core products (those which we are most known for) are our on-line music retail store Diskery, weekly radio show State of The Empire Address, the music research and archive site RRCA, and a set of CD-ROM Encyclopedias: Alliance, Recorded History, & Polishing of Metal.
The company slogan is: Communications For The Nations.
The company mascot is a chainmail wearing, guitar toting skeleton character called Skel.
The company President/CEO is its founder Derek McDonald.
The History:
It all started in 1998 when computer programmer and entrepreneur Derek McDonald founded Emperor Multimedia Corporation Ltd. He is a fully intigrated part of the operation. At that time he was 26 years old
and desired to live out a childhood fantasy, to make a record. For years the black plastic discs, and indeed, all communications technology fascinated him. The discs by then had become bright shiny CDs but his fascination didn't end.
When Emperor first opened its doors, the local press issued the headline "Local entrepreneur referred to as the next Bill Gates". The announcement of the new company created interest in banks and stock investors. Despite this, Emperor remains registered as a private limited liability company.
The Influence of the RRCA:
Back in 1995, Derek was the founding member of the RRCA (Rock Record Collectors Association),
a web site dedicated to fellow rock music lovers. A place where they could
find out anything they wanted to know about their favourite bands and talk
shop. But his time at the RRCA wasn't a passive one. He quickly became an
active member in the music underground media by writing and publishing
several documentary articles for many magazines, not to mention reviewing new albums,
artists and local concerts. During this time he would learn everything he needed to know
on the recording and production of a record.
After figuring out the production aspects he went ahead and did it; he and his "RRCA" branched out into record production and manufacturing in October 1998 by his incorporation of Emperor Multimedia Corporation. The name "Emperor" was a carefully chosen one, representing his desire to influence the industry around the world; to become as "powerful as an Emperor". His reign, however, would be like that of a "benevolent despotism". He desired major changes in his adopted industry and would strive to make those improvements.
9 months later, with the cooperation of the artists featured, (some 40 people on 4 continents) the debut compilation album from Emperor Multimedia featuring RRCA member artists was launched, titled The Alliance. It immediately received airplay on some of Toronto's largest rock radio stations, a feature article in local newspapers and reviews, sales and play in 18 other countries to obtain an almost cult status in the underground music culture, the album even receiving praise for its innovative and detailed artwork designed specifically with the Heavy Metal fan in mind depicting the first occurrence of company mascot "Skel", conceived of by McDonald but illustrated by Jamie Haigh of South African Death Metal band Demacretia.
The Arrival of Diskery:
Frustrated with the attitude and inattention of music distributors, Derek would press his venture forward with his own music distribution operation titled Diskery, a name he picked from a question posed while watching the American TV game show "Jeopardy". (Diskery means the old fashioned word for "record company".)
When Diskery first came on-line in 1999 it was cited as the most technologically advanced music sales system ever seen. It then (as it does now) featured interactive shopping, allowing the visitor to buy with every major credit card on-line, hear audio clips and watch video for the albums featured, not to mention an aggressive pricing scheme that offered extremely competitive pricing unmatched in stores and difficult for other on-line retailers. Diskery's big savings was Derek's own skills in computers. His talent for knowing electronics allowed him to not only write every instruction of all the software used at Diskery, but the very computers it runs on as well, allowing the company to save tens of thousands of dollars on development and maintenance costs.
Diskery ended off being a very important component to Emperor and started generating money as one of the world's first integrated electronic music sales systems, and by 2002 Diskery would sell music almost exclusively on-line, managing to make money on each disc it sold!
The Closure of DMCS:
One of the sad aspects of this growing empire was there was no room for the old school within it. For many years Derek had already operated a business called DMCS technologies. DMCS was an innovator in early computer communications software. One of its most famous product lines was the McBBS bulletin board system for Commodore and DOS, not to mention the Comterm terminal emulator. But DMCS was unable to keep up with the changing world, a world that was taking Derek's attention toward the events at Emperor. DMCS was formerly dissolved in May of 2001. McBBS had been discontinued the year before and Comterm was stopped the day the company folded, its entire back catalog being assumed by Emperor who discontinued the products immediately. McBBS, however, has a page on the famous Wikipedia on-line encyclopedia website.
Recorded History:
Derek had since published articles in many magazines, as well as assisted with the introduction writeups on the seleves of several Artists CDs, not to mention the many untold titles of multiemdia CDs until
2003 when Emperor Multimedia would become one of Canada's premier publisher of E-book technology
when the Recorded History encyclopedia on rock music was published to high acclaim. The album was accepted by
universities and libraries across North America and internationally,
including the Great Library of Alexandria (UNESCO). Such publications now constitute
the bulk of the activity at the company. The disc merged computer technology with music by featuring the history of Rock and Roll from its founding to the present in some 1000 pages of PDF text, color photographs, 500 album reviews and music from up-and-coming indie artists in MP3 format, not to mention links to the Diskery sales system. The stunning artwork yet again featuring "Skel" in a historical pose and illustrated by Jamie Haigh.
Sticklers for detail with their research and development, it would be three more years before Emperor would move in again with something new. The Alliance proved to be a success for the company but Recorded History wasn't so much. Banking that a combination of the two would wow the crowds more, Polishing of Metal was released to much fanfare. Polishing of Metal (released in 2006) was what The Alliance should have been if the company had more money and experience in hindsight. The CD recounted the story of the Heavy Metal music genre like never before with 5000 pages of PDF text, 900 reviews, 1,300 artist biographies, some 5 hours of music in both standard playback and MP3 modes, over 100 color photographs, links to the Diskery sales system, and 19 full videos all on a 2 CD set! It was manufactured by Sony Canada and distributed by Emperor with an aggressive distribution campaign that saw it available in some 2400 stores, heavy radio & print play and availability in some of the largest on-line distributors of music. Polishing of Metal was granted the most consumer access than any Emperor Multimedia product in the past. So confident and awash in money was Emperor that they re-launched the past two CDs through the same network to boost those disc's sagging sales. This time "Skel" was illustrated by Barry Waddell of Florida, USA Progressive Metal act Seasons Of The Wolf, with inner artwork done by Rainer Kalwitz.
Polishing of Metal was simply the latest in what the company has to offer as CD E-books for other musical genres are expected. Emperor has also plans to re-open research and development of a project lost with the closure of DMCS involving the creation of their own computer operating system. And it doesn't end there: Emperor has been known for sometime to have a program to develop its own computer systems. Like it's earlier brothers, POM also made it into the UNESCO "Great Library" project.
Internet Radio:
On October 30th, 2007 the company's attempt to launch their own digital and/or internet radio station was a reality with the launch of NWR. NWR would broadcast for all of 4 weeks before changing from a music format to talk and news format. The music content would be compressed into a show called State of The Empire Address and hosted by Derek himself, and moved over to Cut Throat Radio in the USA, a station owned and operated by Andrew Mills. News of the launch made it onto the Mi2n music industry news wires.
Some trivia:
©2006 Emperor Multimedia Corp. Ltd.