eTonal Media Company History
In early June of 1998, two New York University grad students sat down at the Bendix Diner on the West Side of Manhattan
to architect their joint graduate thesis. As an experiment, Christopher Sung and
Sean Kelly, being both avid guitarists and programmers,
decided to create a unique community-based website to cater to the two strongest characteristics inherent
to guitarists: their desire to get better, and their generosity in sharing what they know. The result
of this meeting was the conception of the WholeNote.com website, and the birth of the remote publishing and sharing of musical instruction on the Internet.
 |
|
The Founders of eTonal Media, Inc. |
|
To provide a corporate structure to support the business possibilities of WholeNote, eTonal Media, Inc. was formed as a Delaware C corporation in January, 1999. The WholeNote brand was trademarked, and a patent was filed for the LessonEngine technology that powers the remote authoring and publishing of musical instructional material on the WholeNote website.
In the summer of 1999, WholeNote.com was officially launched, using server space generously donated by the
Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at New York
University. The site was an immediate success, resulting in numerous awards, coverage in
Guitar Player Magazine and other industry publications, and being named "Best Community Website"
at the 1999 Invision Awards presented by New Media Magazine.
In late 1999, Jim Burger joined the fold to provide adult supervision
for the endeavor, enabling the site to become self-sustaining outside of its NYU confines. By providing advertising, sponsorships, and
other promotional opportunities for music-related companies to reach the thousands of guitarists that visit the site
each day, the site is able to offset the substantial costs of hosting, maintenance, and new
functionality and musical goodies for the site's growing user base.
In May of 2000, ActiveBass.com was launched to provide similar interactive services and content to the bass playing community. With consistent double-digit monthly growth in traffic, a membership of over 8,000, and over 600 on-line interactive lessons, ActiveBass has filled a much-needed void for bassists on-line.
In late November of 2000, eTonal unveiled its first endeavor in e-commerce, ActiveMusician.com, featuring over 30,000 products for the amateur and professional musician. Using a custom-built e-commerce and web publishing engine, the site is able to serve a wide variety of unique product views to a vast range of users with little cost and maintenance.
