VyRT is an American provider of on-demandInternet streaming media available to viewers worldwide. The company was established in late 2011 and is headquartered in Los Angeles, California. VyRT was founded by entertainer Jared Leto as a website for hosting online events, but soon diversified into featuring digital distribution and online shopping. It also includes social networking. By 2015, VyRT was receiving 3.5 million requests per minute and had surpassed 5,000 subscribers. Many of its live events became worldwide trending topics.
History
VyRT was established in late 2011 as a startup company by entertainer Jared Leto. His aim was to let musicians create live experiences and broadcast them on the Internet, with the ability to share their work without having to rely on the prevailing sponsor-based model. Its idea came from some frustrating experiences Leto faced with American rock band Thirty Seconds to Mars in streaming their own live events. On December 7, 2011, VyRT streamed the Tribus Centum Numerarae, the 300th show of the Into the Wild Tour by Thirty Seconds to Mars, which garnered the band the Guinness World Record for most live shows during a single album cycle. The show marked the launch of the online platform VyRT. At the 2012 O Music Awards in June, it was awarded Best Online Concert Experience. After the first streamed events, VyRT transitioned to a new site, expanding to digital distribution and online shopping, selling video downloads/streaming, MP3 downloads/streaming, and e-books. It also began to feature social networking. The team rebuilt the website in Ruby on Rails and expanded its capacity on Heroku. An official store featuring merchandise, DVDs, books, and apparel was also launched. The artists featured on VyRT included Gerard Way, Linkin Park, Greek Fire, The Janoskians, Ryan Cabrera, and Brendan Brazier. Later, it began to stream films, beginning on August 31, 2013 with special screenings of the documentary film Artifact, followed by the psychological horror filmThe Shining on February 9, 2014. In August 2014, it was announced that VyRT would exclusively broadcast worldwide the performance from the Carnivores Tour by Linkin Park and Thirty Seconds to Mars, scheduled on September 15 at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. Before Thirty Seconds to Mars took to the stage, the VyRT platform was hacked and was a victim of a piracy. Jared Leto was forced to delay the performance by Thirty Seconds to Mars by an hour to resolve the issue. The audience eventually lost approximately three minutes of actual stage time, but the set list was shortened. The event included "real-time social community engagement from audiences worldwide". In November 2014, the documentary series Into the Wild premiered on VyRT. The series was produced by Jared Leto and Emma Ludbrook through the production company Sisyphus Corporation.
Services
The VyRT website features a main page, Live, and Vault, as well as a series of personal pages. The Live sections provide live streaming events as well as social networking. Users log in during the broadcast and can chat with others via live feed. The interaction window allows users to quote, invite, reply, or find other users' profiles. Artists can also interact with users on the live feed. The Vault sections consist of all available events for purchase, including streaming and downloads.
