About ListenSmart.com
Sean P. Fenlon founded ListenSmart.com in 1999 and launched it in 2000 as an online music portal for independent artists and music listeners. The original portal is no longer functional, but its design and content can still be seen in the Original Site and the archive on this site, and on the Wayback Machine at Archive.org.
The original company was a pre-revenue startup, spending its seed money while it raised venture capital. After the dot-com crash in the spring of 2000, Napster dominated the headlines that summer and froze investment in online music. Venture capitalists pulled their term sheets, and the company ran out of money. Its story, team and business plan are told in Our Story.
To give listeners a richer music-appreciation environment, a section of ListenSmart.com offered a wealth of information for visitors who wanted to learn more about the world of music. The articles were prepared by doctoral students from The Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University and other professional writers on topics from Music Theory to Instruments to Music History to Styles & Genres. They were retrieved from the archives in 2014 and are presented here, free, on the original domain.
Who runs this site
ListenSmart.com is maintained by Sean Fenlon, founder of ListenSmart.com. It carries no advertising and no affiliate links.
Contact
Corrections and removal requests: seanfenlon@yahoo.com.