Website www.leventkarahan.com | ||
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Born October 25, 1966 (age 50) ( 1966-10-25 ) Alma mater Drummers Focus, School Of Audio Engineering Institute Occupation Music technology entrepreneur Known for Founder of JAY Entertainment, YOOM, REGGAEinc, UMIJam, EVEARA Children Deniz Karahan, Lili Meral Karahan Parent(s) Cemil Karahan, Meral Karahan | ||
Levent Karahan (born 25 October 1966) is a Laz music technology entrepreneur, a pioneer of digital music distribution, founder and chief executive officer of various organizations such as JAY Entertainment, YOOM, REGGAEinc, UMIJam, and EVEARA, a member of the Recording Industry Association Of Jamaica (RIAJam) and the Reggae Academy & Awards.
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Early life and background
Levent Karahan was born in Arhavi, Turkey on October 25, 1966. In 1972 his parents migrated to Munich, Germany. Inspired by The Beatles, he decided to pursue music, starting out as a drummer. Going forward he became involved in songwriting, audio engineering, music production, music video production, and music management. Some of his compositions and music productions such as Love Is The Only Way, The Box Song, and Butterfly resulted in success and in 2003 Butterfly made it to the Top 100 in Germany. In 2002, he migrated to Jamaica and lived there for 8 years until he returned to Turkey in 2010.
Career
Levent explored the business side of the music universe subsequently becoming a Label Manager of Toxic (Mambo/Sony) in 1997. In 1998, he became A&R Manager of Columbia (Sony), and a publisher with Universal. In December 1998, he launched Talent'99, a talent show case for the German music industry. In 1999, he founded JAY Entertainment, a venture into the earliest online music labels.
In the year 2000, he became Director Business Development of People Sound, a European mainstream music portal, and founded YOOM, which is claimed to be the world's first standardized software for digital music downloads. In 2001, YOOM merged with 24-7 Entertainment (MediaSaturn/Metro) which later became a mainstream digital entertainment company. In 2003, he founded REGGAEinc, the first Reggae content aggregation and digital Reggae distribution company operating out of Jamaica.
In 2007, Karahan became a member of the Recording Industry Association Of Jamaica (RIAJam) and the Reggae Academy & Awards, he was co-founder and president of UMIJam (The United Music Industry Of Jamaica), the umbrella organization of the Jamaican music industry from 2008-2010, initiated by the Jamaican government and the European Union.
In 2013, he joined forces with WAVTEQ, a fast growing innovative international software company with its software development hub based in Ireland, with the common goal to produce a competitive digital music distribution software. In 2015, they incorporated EVEARA in Cork, Ireland, a game changer in the digital music distribution solution market.
Discography
Over the course of his career the following list is a part of his notable discography: