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Technology Stocks : e.Digital (EDIG) -- Get Up To Speed Quickly! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: q_long who wrote (79)4/28/2000 8:16:00 PM
From: Walter Morton  Respond to of 92
 
MP3.com is a web site. MP3.com has no link to EDIG or any of its products.

Message 13521071

If you were to buy an EDIG designed player that played the MP3 music compression format, there is a possibility that you could go to MP3.com and download the music and listen to it on you EDIG designed player. However, MP3.com does not own the MP3 compression codec. There will be hundreds of other web sites that will offer music in the MP3 format besides MP3.com.



To: q_long who wrote (79)6/14/2000 12:03:00 PM
From: Walter Morton  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 92
 
"Nearly a year later, not much progress has been made, contributing to the struggles of digital music stocks."

Morningstar.com

Profits of Digital Music Are Still Far Off
By George E. Nichols

When I visited the digital music landscape last July, I bemoaned the chief obstacle to success: the lack of legally available music from popular artists. Nearly a year later, not much progress has been made, contributing to the struggles of digital music stocks.

I also lambasted market leader MP3.com (Nasdaq: MPPP - news) as a poor investment vehicle, since enthusiasm for the stock was propped up by many misconceptions. Now, the stock is down 85% from its IPO peak.

Although MP3.com CEO Michael Robertson deserves credit for creating a business before music industry executives even knew how to spell MP3, his jihad against the music labels alienated MP3.com from the gatekeepers that control nearly 90% of popular music. The company has been mired in so much litigation that shareholders may be wondering if MP3.com is a Philip Morris in the making.

MP3.com has settled litigation with two of the major labels so far, and it gained some access to their popular music, an important breakthrough. Nevertheless, the labels remain distrustful of MP3.com and are choosing to back other companies, including ArtistDirect (Nasdaq: ARTD - news), Listen.com, and MusicBank.com.

Beyond its legal problems, MP3.com still doesn't generate strong commerce revenue and is increasingly dependent on advertising. For the first quarter of 2000, e-commerce revenue constituted 3.8% of net sales, a sharp decline from 15.9% during the same period a year earlier. Ads, however, are dependent on eyeballs, and MP3.com's traffic growth is stagnating.

For MP3.com and the rest of the industry to take off, music labels must make their popular content available in digital format, which they have been in no hurry to do. This new business model is a radical departure from their expertise in building relationships with traditional music retailers, like Musicland (NYSE: MLG - news), and radio stations.

The labels (and artists) don't want to move online until copyright security can be guaranteed. However, it is practically impossible for digital-rights management companies like Intertrust (Nasdaq: ITRU - news) and Reciprocal to come up with technology that is both hacker-proof and user-friendly.

I visited the home pages of major labels and found downloads for sale only at Sony (NYSE: SNE - news). But the company's effort is half-hearted so far, with the music of only 39 artists available for download. Consumers can buy vinyl LPs from 106 Sony artists. Also, these downloads are being sold at an exorbitant $2.50 per song.

So it's no surprise that music fans embrace black-market exchanges, including those facilitated by the Napster file-exchanging software. Despite the dearth of digital music commerce revenue, the popularity of MP3 continues to skyrocket, thanks to the proliferation of free, illegal files. A recent study showed that 57% of college students surveyed are at least weekly users of Napster, and dozens of colleges have shut down Napster access after music downloads began to clog their networks. Other programs, such as Gnutella, allow users to freely exchange files of any kind. The labels have little control over this, so they need to focus on offering downloads for sale soon, even if they aren't guaranteed a perfectly secure environment.

Because the digital music market is still in its infancy, it's tough to be sure who the eventual winners will be. If you're willing to stray beyond struggling pure-play digital music stocks like Liquid Audio (Nasdaq: LQID - news) or Emusic.com (Nasdaq: EMUS - news), some notable names are America Online (NYSE: AOL - news), Sony, and Sandisk (Nasdaq: SNDK - news). All of these companies will benefit from the rising popularity of digital music, and they generate healthy cash flow today.

The combined Time Warner/AOL is shaping up to be a giant in this market, as my colleague Pat Dorsey pointed out. AOL owns popular digital music software and Time Warner (NYSE: TWX - news) is home to one of the largest catalogs of pop music. The only other tech-savvy music label worth looking at is Sony. In addition to its stable of pop music, the company sells a portable MP3 player that uses flash memory. Manufacturers of flash memory are scrambling to keep up with demand, thanks to the boom in portable devices. Sandisk is a major player in this industry. Sandisk flash memory resides inside 78 models of MP3 players, as well as in a forthcoming cell phone that plays MP3s.

Regardless of who benefits, the digital music marketplace has developed more slowly than originally anticipated. There definitely is strong demand; a recent survey showed that many users would be willing to pay $15 monthly for Napster-like services. But the market will develop only as fast as the $38 billion recorded music industry can take its baby steps toward digital music.

George E. Nichols can be reached at george_nichols@morningstar.com.

biz.yahoo.com



To: q_long who wrote (79)8/1/2000 12:40:22 PM
From: Walter Morton  Respond to of 92
 
LQID offers an explanation as to why digital music has not taken off and indirectly suggests the reason why stock prices of companies involved with digital music have fallen. Listen to the last 10 minutes of the conference call:

corporate-ir.net (click on replay)

How does this matter to the EDIG shareholder:

- Music Industry is having trouble re-negotiating its contracts

- Music Industry is at least two quarters behind

- Sanyo is coming out with a digital music player that supports Liquid Audio and will provide digital music players for other OEMs

_____________________

The longer it takes legal digital music to get up and going the more time OEMs have to come up with their own portable digital music/video design and operating system.

Please make comments on the other EDIG thread.



To: q_long who wrote (79)8/27/2000 7:54:55 PM
From: Walter Morton  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 92
 
Remote Solution/Hango Electronics Chooses e.Digital Technology for New Generation Portable Digital Music Jukebox

Cleo to Hold Over 100 CD's Worth of Music on Internal Drive

SAN DIEGO, Aug 23, 2000 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- e.Digital Corp. (OTC: EDIG chart, msgs) today announced an agreement with Remote Solution, the U.S. marketing and sales organization for HanGo Electronics, Co., Ltd., Korea.

Under the agreement, Remote Solution will license e.Digital's MicroOS(TM)-based Internet music player design for a new multi-codec, SDMI-capable portable jukebox product named Cleo(TM). Remote Solution plans to introduce the Cleo to the consumer market under its own brand name and in addition will make it available for licensing by name-brand OEM customers in the electronics, computer, and audio industries.

"The Cleo rises above the current Internet music marketplace confusion by including support for several compression formats and digital rights management systems. With major record labels promising to provide Internet downloadable content, it is important for us to provide our customers with a user-friendly product that can support it," said David Ahn, president of Remote Solution. He continued, "We are confident that the combination of our consumer product design and production capabilities and e.Digital's technical expertise and market awareness will create a formidable new competitor in the Internet music player arena."

Fred Falk, president and CEO of e.Digital, added, "Remote Solution is an ideal partner for us because of their pioneering work in their Personal JukeBox product line incorporating a hard disk into a portable MP3 player. It is an ideal fit with the music player reference designs we have refined in the last year, and with our flexible, MicroOS core technology specifically created for use in portable devices." He continued, "We believe that the Cleo will offer music consumers something they have never seen before: a portable digital music jukebox with a simple user interface; support for multiple music codecs including those being adopted by the major record labels; and the ability to store and play back up to 2000 songs."

Hong-Bum Shin, president of HanGo Electronics, said, "Remote Solution/HanGo and e.Digital share an enormous interest in the Internet music industry. We are all committed to generating cutting edge portable designs that will maximize the end user's experience in every way. With all the recent developments in the Internet music industry, and the consumer audience's interest in taking their favorite digital tunes with them, we are pleased with the market prospects for Cleo."

Atul Anandpura, e.Digital vice president of R & D stated, "Cleo will incorporate e.Digital's MicroOS(TM)-based multi-codec music player design and will include a 6.4 GB portable hard drive. We will leverage our customizable MicroOS file management system to effectively manage the large-capacity hard disk in Cleo. Our core technology is flexible by design, to allow the incorporation of a hard disk or other storage media in place of Flash memory in portable devices."

e.Digital's flexible, multi-codec Internet music player design also incorporates a Digital Signal Processor (DSP) from Texas Instruments.

 About Remote Solution

Remote Solution, located in Brea, Calif., is the U.S. Marketing and sales organization for HanGo Electronics, Co., Ltd., Korea. For more information on the company, visit www.remotesolution.com.

 About HanGo Electronics, Co., Ltd.

HanGo Electronics, Co., Ltd., located in Kimchun, Korea, was founded in January 1993. The company is a leading manufacturer of remote controls, multimedia and other consumer devices, specializing in high-volume OEM manufacturing and production work. HanGo Electronics has leading brand name customers including; Hitachi, NEC, Daewoo, General Instruments, Lexicon, TIVO, and Harman Kardon. HanGo Electronics is also an OEM manufacturer of several newly announced expansion modules for Handspring's(TM) new line of handheld computers.

 About e.Digital

e.Digital Corp. offers an engineering partnership for the world's leading electronics companies to link portable digital devices to PCs and the Internet. e.Digital develops and markets to consumer electronics manufacturers complete end-to-end solutions for delivery and management of open and secure digital media with a focus on music players/recorders and portable digital voice recorders. Engineering services range from the licensing of e.Digital's patented MicroOS(TM) file management system to custom software and hardware development, industrial design and manufacturing services. For more information on the company, visit www.edig.com.



To: q_long who wrote (79)11/9/2000 5:46:47 PM
From: Walter Morton  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 92
 
EDIG signs agreement with Samsung for two different DataPlay type digital music players.

Source: Shareholders' Meeting via the internet. See the the edig.com Web site.