IUMA Revived by Vitaminic

The Internet Underground Music Archive (IUMA) (www.iuma.com), which ceased operations in early 2001, was resuscitated this week by Vitaminic ( www.vitaminic.com), a European digital platform for the promotion and distribution of music over the Internet.

IUMA was founded in 1993 and after being swept up in the dot-com hype, accumulated debt that lead to its acquisition by Emusic in 2000. As of January 2001, Emusic declined to continue funding IUMA for 2001. The dedicated staff stayed for nearly a month on a voluntary basis while the company looked for alternate funding opportunities. In February 2001, the staff was told to begin looking for other work, and all non-automated functions of the site were halted. At that time founder Jeff Patterson was continuing his search for funding. This week his dreams came true in the form of an acquisition by Vitaminic.

"IUMA cannot be stopped," gushed Patterson in a statement. "We werehere first and we are going to be here forever. When we ran out of cashthe staff volunteered — when the staff became overwhelmed, the artistsvolunteered. We're supported by a community of 25,000 artists with avoice that grows stronger every day, and we are simply too passionate to let this community die."

Within a week, IUMA is scheduled to begin accepting new artists and re-launch all IUMA services including new submissions, site stats,charts, features, the IUMA A&R affiliate network and all revenue-sharing programs.