YET ANOTHER PERTINENT NEWS STORY!!!!
Internet Music Distributor The Orchard Licenses the Lucent Technologies
ePAC Coder to Encode Its Music Library
MIDDLETOWN, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 24, 2000--Lucent Technologies
(NYSE: LU) announced today that it has licensed its industry-leading
Lucent Enhanced Perceptual Audio Coder(TM) (ePAC(TM)) to Internet music
distributor The Orchard (www.theorchard.com) for use in encoding the
company's 50,000-track music library. The deal will enable ePAC content
to be offered to all major online record outlets, including Amazon.com
and CD Now, and will make ePAC content available on-demand at
participating retail record outlets.
Catering to independent music artists and labels from all genres of
music - including A Flock of Seagulls, Alphaville, Bob Welch, D.O.A.,
and Less Than Jake -- The Orchard provides instant, non-exclusive
worldwide music distribution to any artist with a finished CD. The
Orchard's music library is growing at an estimated 6,000-8,000 tracks
per month. The company operates as a wholesaler of Internet music
content, supplying branded retail sites with physical goods and premium
licensed digital music content on a per-download basis.
"The advent of the virtual record store has become reality through The
Orchard, and we are delighted to have them as a partner in delivering
the benefits of ePAC to a large, and growing, customer base of Internet
music distributors," said Joyce Eastman, vice president of audio
initiatives for Lucent Technologies. "The Orchard provides a conduit
that enables independent music artists - who produce the largest
percentage of music sold over the Internet - to reap the benefits of
the Internet music revolution. Through The Orchard's broad distribution
channels, we believe that ePAC will help sell even more consumers on
the concept of digital music download."
"Lucent has earned the respect of the music industry for their ongoing
development of what is the highest quality music coder we've heard -
ePAC - and we believe that ePAC will significantly enhance the value of
our music catalog," said Daryl Berg, senior director of business
development for The Orchard. "In order for the distribution model of
Internet music to become truly dominant, we need to have ePAC's quality
and reliability widely available."
Lucent is a founding member of the Secure Digital Music Initiative
(SDMI), the worldwide recording industry's effort to develop an open,
secure access system for digital music.
Lucent's ePAC coder is interoperable with RealNetworks' G2 Player and
has been licensed to e.Digital for its handheld Internet music device
and to Lydstrom, Inc. for its Songbank home Internet stereo device. The
ePAC coder will also be integrated into VedaLabs' music software and
hardware platforms.
ePAC is based on the Lucent Perceptual Audio Coder(TM) (PAC(TM)), the
highest-quality digital audio codec in the industry.
ePAC is a new version of the Lucent Perceptual Audio Coder(TM)
(PAC(TM)) developed by Bell Labs, the research and development arm of
Lucent Technologies. PAC is an audio compression algorithm with the
highest-quality audio at the lowest bit rates. At 128 kilobits per
second, ePAC offers CD-transparent stereo sound.
ePAC uses psychoacoustic modeling - that is, a representation of how
humans hear sound - to compress music in a way that is not noticeable
to the ear. Music is compressed at a rate of 11 to 1, thus reducing the
transmission time/bandwidth and storage by the same ratio, while still
retaining its fidelity.
Several recent improvements in ePAC have pushed its performance levels
to new heights, including: ePAC's improved quantization and coding,
allowing higher quality audio at lower bit rates, and ePAC's improved
psychoacoustic modeling from Bell Labs research, which provides
CD-transparent sound at 128 kbps.
ePAC's variable bit rates and superior audio quality allow the coder to
be used in multiple bandwidth applications.
Lucent Technologies' famed research and development arm, Bell Labs, has
been at the forefront of technology for the music industry for decades,
with the introduction of sound for motion pictures in 1926; the
invention of stereo recording in 1933; the invention of the transistor
in 1947; the introduction of computer-synthesized music in the 1950s;
the introduction of psychoacoustics in the 1960s; sub-band coding of
audio in the 1970s; the introduction of linear predictive coding in the
1980s, and the Perceptual Audio Coder in the 1990s.
The Orchard is the largest supplier of independent music to the
Internet stores. Based in New York City, it is headed by CEO Richard
Gottehrer, the legendary music producer and co-founder of Sire Records.
For more information, visit the Web site at www.theorchard.com.
Lucent Technologies, headquartered in Murray Hill, N.J., designs,
builds and delivers a wide range of public and private networks,
communications systems and software, data networking systems, business
telephone systems and microelectronic components. Bell Labs is the
research and development arm for the company. For more information on
Lucent Technologies, visit the company's web site at www.lucent.com.
CONTACT:
Lucent Technologies, Middletown
Chris Pfaff
908/582-7571 (office)
800/705-2368 (pager)
cpfaff@lucent.com
or
Wendy Zajack
908/582-4824 (office)
wzajack@lucent.com
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