From today's WSJ:
June 1, 1999
"America Online Acquires a Pair
Of Internet-Music Companies
Dow Jones Newswires
America Online Inc. said Tuesday that it acquired Spinner Networks Inc.
and software developer Nullsoft Inc., two small companies that will help
the online giant significantly boost its music offerings.
AOL said the two stock transactions are valued at about $400 million. The
companies' technology will be used to let the online service's 18 million
users play audio files created using all the leading Internet-music formats,
including the controversial MP3.
Music is one of the Internet's biggest draws.
By offering a broad range of Internet music
content itself, AOL can help keep its users
from straying outside of its online walls. It could also draw new users to
AOL's network of Web sites.
Spinner Networks' music service, Spinner.com, attracts 1.5 million users a
month, with more than 175,000 available songs, AOL said. Spinner also
supplies music to other Internet companies.
The addition of Spinner will help AOL compete with offerings from
Yahoo! Inc., which is buying broadcast.com Inc., the most-popular
Internet broadcaster. Another AOL rival, Lycos Inc., also is making a big
push into music with a new Internet-broadcast network and a search
engine that finds songs in the MP3 format.
MP3 is controversial because it lacks built-in protections for copyrights
and royalties. The record industry is now scrambling to come up with a
standard secure format for digital music. However, most observers feel
that MP3 -- or some form of it -- will continue to flourish even after the
record companies introduce their format.
AOL's second acquisition, Nullsoft, created the Winamp MP3 "player."
The Winamp software program, available for free through vendors such as
MP3.com, has been installed on an estimated five million personal
computers. Nullsoft also makes Shoutcast, which enables users to
broadcast their own music content over the Internet.
In addition to using Spinner and Nullsoft to increase the offerings on its
online service and Web sites, AOL said it will use the acquired companies
to create music content for its CompuServe, Netcenter and ICQ brands."
This article shows the direction and strength of the downloadable music sector, imo. |
