X5 Music Group
| X5 Music Group | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Founded | 2003, |
| Founder |
Johan Lagerlöf Daniel Bäckström Stefan Enberg |
| Status | Active |
| Genre | Various (classical, jazz, blues, folk, rock, pop) |
| Location | Stockholm, Sweden Empire State Building, New York City, United States |
| Official website | X5MusicGroup.com |
X5 Music Group is an independent record label based in with a branch in Manhattan, New York. Founded in 2003, it is a digital-only label that primarily licenses pre-existing music for compilation albums. X5 originally focused on classical music, and in 2011 its custom album The Greatest Video Game Music, featuring the London Philharmonic Orchestra, debuted at #23 on the Billboard 200. Since 2009 they company has had 24 albums on the chart; all 24 were custom digital releases produced by the label.
They have a partnership with Universal Music Group called U5, which releases approximately 50 digital compilation albums per month. In 2013 X5 was named one of the Red Herring "Top 100 Most Innovative Companies in Europe.
X5 Music Group was founded in in 2003 by Johan Lagerlöf, Daniel Bäckström, and Stefan Enberg. All three founders had pre-existing connections in the music industry. CEO Lagerlöf, for example, had previously co-founded companies such as Mobilehits, Scandinavia's most popular music site, and was also a songwriter/producer for .
X5 was created with the mutual vision of being digital-only. Classical music was chosen as a focus; many classical compositions are in the public domain. They also gained access to the catalogs of about 50 other companies, mostly independent classical labels in Europe, and repacked them into what the The Wall Street Journal called "like classical mix-tapes."
X5's producers partly focus on sales data to determine what should go into compilations, paying mind to keywords and SEO.The New York Times stated "To attract classical neophytes, X5’s collections have search-engine-friendly titles and simple, self-explanatory cover art." Accordingly, compilations often have titles such as The Most Essential Classical Music for Your Baby and Classical Music for Hipsters. On May 26, 2008, X5 released The 50 Most Essential Pieces of Classical Music. The album cost about $150 to compile, and by April 2013 had brought in $3.4 million in revenue.
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