Biography


  Michael Goldberg, InsiderOne's president, CEO and founder, is a distinguished pioneer in the online music space; Newsweek magazine called him an "Internet visionary."

In 1994 Goldberg founded (and named) Addicted To Noise (ATN), a highly influential music Web site and the first with original content. (See sidebar: ATN Firsts.)

At ATN, Goldberg created and oversaw the Addicted To Noise Music News of the World. This well-respected round-the-clock music news service developed a global reach into over 40 million homes. Goldberg's other innovations included the world's first online album review with audio samples, as well as Cinemachine, the movie-review search engine.

In 1997, Addicted To Noise merged with Paradigm Music Entertainment's SonicNet division, and Goldberg was named Senior Vice President and Editorial Director of SonicNet. He evolved the Addicted To Noise Music News of the World to a new identity as SonicNet Music News, a service delivering daily reports to millions of music fans around the world via radio, TV, print, wireless devices and the Internet.

Under Goldberg's direction, SonicNet Music News' intense, in-depth, immediate coverage of major rock events — notably the Tibetan Freedom Concert and the 1999 Woodstock riot — broke new journalistic ground. In the early months of 2000, Goldberg expanded SonicNet's editorial coverage to include the country, classical, jazz and world music genres, in addition to rock, pop and hip-hop. Goldberg both initiated and oversaw the yearlong investigation that resulted in SonicNet's series "Playing With Fire: The Untold Story of Woodstock 99" which was awarded a Scripps Howard Foundation National Journalism Award for Web reporting in 2001.

Recognizing the Web's potential as an information repository, Goldberg saw the need to make SonicNet/ATN stories available as an ongoing resource. He oversaw the creation of an archive to house thousands of news stories, reviews, columns and other editorial created exclusively for SonicNet or ATN; today, the archive is a valuable resource routinely used by music journalists and authors.

After MTV Networks acquired SonicNet in July 1999 and made it part of a new company, MTVi Group, SonicNet became the core of MTVi's Internet strategy. Named Editor in Chief, SonicNet, in August 1999, Goldberg continued to oversee Addicted To Noise and Cinemachine as well.

While Goldberg was at SonicNet, the company won Webby awards for best music site in 1998 and 1999, and also won Yahoo Internet Life! awards for three years running as best music site in 1998, 1999 and 2000.

At SonicNet, Goldberg co-created SonicNet's FlashRadio, a service that pioneered the convergence of music and Flash animation. As an executive at MTVi, he created MTVi's first download area, D-Rev 2000, which combined digital music news with a multi-genre annotated download section.

Also at SonicNet he wrote, produced and directed "rrrebel.com," a futuristic, sci-fi Flash animation serial.

After leaving SonicNet/MTVi at the end of May 2000, Goldberg founded InsiderOne. A consulting and production company serving the online and offline entertainment business, InsiderOne produced Flash animation pieces for both ARTISTdirect and Cablevision's MuchMusic.

Prior to starting Addicted To Noise, Goldberg was an editor and senior writer at Rolling Stone magazine for 10 years. His writing has also appeared in Wired, Esquire, Vibe, Details, Downbeat, the New Musical Express and numerous other publications. The Bay Area native began his professional career — for which he prepared by running a poster business in junior high school, promoting concerts at his high school and publishing local rock magazine Hard Road — as a columnist for director Francis Ford Coppola's City of San Francisco magazine in 1975.

Goldberg's weekly music column, "The Drama You've Been Craving," appears on StarPolish.com and on insiderone.net.




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