Music Ally Focus #63: Co-founder of The Orchard, Richard Gottehrer, looks back on the company's 25 years as a digital distributor; and talks about the future of music distribution

The Orchard was the first digital music distributor, and it's now 25 years old – so we asked co-founder Richard Gottehrer what he has learned along the way, and what the future holds for digital distributors. Richard is a man with a rich history of varied activity and success in the music industry: starting as a successful songwriter, he went on to form Sire records with Seymour Stein, producing albums by Blondie, the Go-Gos and Dr Feelgood along the way. In 1997, he co-founded The Orchard with Scott Cohen (now Chief Innovation Officer at WMG), which later became a subsidiary of Sony Music.  The Orchard: theorchard.com Richard's song choice: Percy Sledge - When A Man Loves A Woman - youtube.com/watch?v=EYb84BDMbi0 ------- 👋 The Knowledge, Music Ally’s free weekly newsletter: musically.lnk.to/knowledgepo Ⓜ️ Subscribe to Music Ally's industry-standard analysis, reporting and news: musically.com/subscribe Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/musicallybiz Twitter: https://twitter.com/musically Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/musicallyfb