Trending on Billboard Richard Gottehrer co-founded The Orchard with then-partner Scott Cohen in 1997 — or five years before iTunes opened its first digital storefront. It was a time when physical music was the dominant format, and the only conversations happening around digital were theoretical arguments over what form the economic model would take. Related While still in its infancy, the company was lucky — but also shrewd enough to be named as the sole distributor of DIY indie artists and their labels for Valley Media, which led to them supplying music to early purveyors like CDNow and Music Boulevard, online stores at the dawn of the digital age. And they had the foresight to include digital distribution rights in all contracts with artists and labels, even when the main form of distribution The Orchard trafficked in at the time was in CDs. So began the evolution of The Orchard, which today is the largest distributor of independent music in the world.…