About Michael Erlewine
This interviewing led to more study, and ultimately
resulted in Michael founding and developing AMG—the
All-Music Guide—which, today, is the single largest
database of music reviews and documentation on the
planet.
Michael Erlewine started from a one-room office. The
reviewers and music aficionados of the time laughed at
his attempt to cover all music, but he persisted, and the
all-Music Guide appeared as a Gopher Site—before the
World Wide Web even existed—a new database of
popular music for all music lovers.
Over the years, as AMG grew, the All-Movie Guide and
the All-Game Guide were created as well and flourished
also. Michael later established ClassicPosters.com, a
guide devoted to the history and documentation of rock
n' roll posters—some 35,000 of them!
These guides changed the way music was reviewed
and rated. Previous to AMG, review guides, such as the
"Rolling Stones Record Guide," were typically run by a
few sophisticated reviewers, and the emphasis was on
the expertise of the reviewer and their point of view.
Erlewine insisted that all artists be treated equally, each
on their own merit, and did not compare artist to artist.
What is important, Michael emphasized, is finding the
best music any artist has produced, not in noting
whether they are better or worse than Jimmie Hendrix or
Bob Dylan.
Erlewine sold AMG in 19 9 6. There were 150 fulltime
employees and 500 free-lance writers working for the
company at that time. During this time, Michael had also
edited and published a large number of books and CD-
ROMs on film and music. While AMG was owned and
run by Michael, there were no advertisements on the
site and nothing was being charged. Erlewine wrote