Brian D. Litman
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Brian D. Litman is an American media, entertainment and technology entrepreneur, producer and inventor.
In the seventies, Litman worked as a journalist, radio producer/broadcaster and record company executive. By the eighties, Litman took an interest in the emergent cable and satellite television industries, working in both cable television (CATV) operations and satellite television network programming. At the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, he was the founding chairman of the cable and satellite committee and also served on the Emmy Awards Committee.
At the beginning of the nineties, Litman was living in Moscow, Russia serving as a business consultant to state-controlled media companies before and after the Collapse of the Soviet Union.
His mandate was to help major television, newspaper and magazine operations transform themselves from state-subsidy towards commercial self-sufficiency.
As an American engaged with politically sensitive media organizations under the direct control of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Litman immediately appeared on the radar of Soviet intelligence - who considered him a potential intelligence operative working under non-official cover.
Aware he was under surveillance, Litman, during the chaos following the 1991 August Coup and subsequent Soviet collapse, transformed himself from espionage target to business associate of his surveillants.
In 1992, Litman negotiated a strategic relationship with the Soviet KGB and its successor - the Russian SVR. He became the executive producer in a broad joint-venture with the global intelligence organization for the development of historical content concerning espionage and the Cold War for books, film, television and the lecture circuit.
In 1993, Litman shepherded the release of highly classified materials from KGB regarding the assassin of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald. The materials, revealed in a book Litman packaged, showed Oswald's disturbed and violent personality while living as a defector in the Soviet Union.
He was also engaged with former Soviet Premier Nikolai Ryzhkov. Litman wrote a plan for the Russian leader for a business consultancy called the Ryzhkov Group.
Litman is directly connected to two technological phenomena which have materially impacted the recorded music industry ... MP3 audio and Napster.
In the latter 1990's and into the early 2000s Litman was a pioneer in the development and proliferation of digital media technologies such as MP3 music playback codec AMP. He co-founded the firm Advanced Multimedia Products which created AMP - the first commercially viable MP3 player. AMP is licensed to and is the namesake of the popular MP3 player WinAMP (Windows + AMP).
Litman subsequently co-founded and is chief executive of PlayMedia Systems, into which Advanced Multimedia Products was merged. PlayMedia was notable for its deep involvement in the controversial Napster.
PlayMedia provided both Napster's MP3 playback technology and was also principal developer of its ".nap" format. Other PlayMedia technologies are also deployed worldwide in numerous hotels, restaurants and retail shops for background music playback.
Concurrent to running PlayMedia, Litman is active in the development crypto-asset technologies and information services.
In the seventies, Litman worked as a journalist, radio producer/broadcaster and record company executive. By the eighties, Litman took an interest in the emergent cable and satellite television industries, working in both cable television (CATV) operations and satellite television network programming. At the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, he was the founding chairman of the cable and satellite committee and also served on the Emmy Awards Committee.
At the beginning of the nineties, Litman was living in Moscow, Russia serving as a business consultant to state-controlled media companies before and after the Collapse of the Soviet Union.
His mandate was to help major television, newspaper and magazine operations transform themselves from state-subsidy towards commercial self-sufficiency.
As an American engaged with politically sensitive media organizations under the direct control of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Litman immediately appeared on the radar of Soviet intelligence - who considered him a potential intelligence operative working under non-official cover.
Aware he was under surveillance, Litman, during the chaos following the 1991 August Coup and subsequent Soviet collapse, transformed himself from espionage target to business associate of his surveillants.
In 1992, Litman negotiated a strategic relationship with the Soviet KGB and its successor - the Russian SVR. He became the executive producer in a broad joint-venture with the global intelligence organization for the development of historical content concerning espionage and the Cold War for books, film, television and the lecture circuit.
In 1993, Litman shepherded the release of highly classified materials from KGB regarding the assassin of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald. The materials, revealed in a book Litman packaged, showed Oswald's disturbed and violent personality while living as a defector in the Soviet Union.
He was also engaged with former Soviet Premier Nikolai Ryzhkov. Litman wrote a plan for the Russian leader for a business consultancy called the Ryzhkov Group.
Litman is directly connected to two technological phenomena which have materially impacted the recorded music industry ... MP3 audio and Napster.
In the latter 1990's and into the early 2000s Litman was a pioneer in the development and proliferation of digital media technologies such as MP3 music playback codec AMP. He co-founded the firm Advanced Multimedia Products which created AMP - the first commercially viable MP3 player. AMP is licensed to and is the namesake of the popular MP3 player WinAMP (Windows + AMP).
Litman subsequently co-founded and is chief executive of PlayMedia Systems, into which Advanced Multimedia Products was merged. PlayMedia was notable for its deep involvement in the controversial Napster.
PlayMedia provided both Napster's MP3 playback technology and was also principal developer of its ".nap" format. Other PlayMedia technologies are also deployed worldwide in numerous hotels, restaurants and retail shops for background music playback.
Concurrent to running PlayMedia, Litman is active in the development crypto-asset technologies and information services.