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Technology Stocks : e.Digital Corporation(EDIG) - Embedded Digital Technology -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JimC1997 who wrote (15134)	9/24/2000 3:15:29 AM
From: mark cox	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 18366

September 22, 2000, 6:10 PM PDT Universal Takes Digital-Music Plunge The world's largest music company hires Loudeye to encode and store thousands of its song and videos. By Jon O'Hara In an unprecedented deal suggesting that serious digital action is afoot at Universal Music Group, the world's largest music company announced Friday that it has selected the encryption company Loudeye to encode and store its entire active U.S. catalog of about 14,000 audio titles and more than 30,000 music videos. The decision to make Loudeye a "preferred digital-media solutions partner" means that a sizable portion of Universal's catalog – not just a few songs released for experimental purposes – could be ready for streaming or other means of digital distribution in a matter of weeks. The agreement has two key components. The first involves a license granted to Loudeye by Universal to encode, host and stream 30-second audio and video samples from its catalog. The samples will come in multiple formats and bit rates, and will be made available to online CD retailers. The second component involves the full-length of Universal's active catalog, which Loudeye will store and make available to UMG licensees such as Musicbank, a secure, on-demand streaming service set to launch this fall. On Aug. 30, Loudeye announced a deal to provide consulting services and encode some 150,000 CDs for Musicbank, which is partially owned by UMG and BMG Entertainment. "Having Loudeye host and stream UMG's audio and video clips enables UMG to further market, promote and drive sales of our artists' music over the Internet," says Larry Kenswil, president of Universal Music Group's eLabs division. "In addition, we expect that our relationship with Loudeye will increase the speed and efficiency with which UMG content licensees like Musicbank are able to build and deploy new digital-media businesses." Loudeye's "minister of order and reason," Martin Tobias, who also is founder and CEO, said of the agreement: "This strategic relationship marks an important step for Loudeye as we move into providing complete backend solutions to entertainment companies interested in providing access to their catalogs of audio and video content. UMG clearly understands the Internet is a key component to their business." Terms of the nonexclusive deal were not disclosed. Loudeye, which describes itself as a "digital-media infrastructure provider," was formed by Tobias in August 1997 as Encoding.com. The company, which focuses on the management and distribution of digital media, as well as encoding services, changed its name to Loudeye late last year and attracted more than $60 million in financing from AOL, Microsoft (MSFT) , Intel (INTC) , CBS (CBS) , NBC and others before going public in March. According to the company's director of strategic marketing, Todd Sawicki, Loudeye is helping to build "the inevitable jukebox in the sky" through its encoding deals with UMG, Sony Music Entertainment and others. The company, which has more than 300 employees, has an automated-encoding capacity of 15,000 CDs and 100 full-length films per week. This means that Universal CD catalog could theoretically be prepared in less than a week, with video titles taking several more weeks to complete. ____________________________________________ Note also about the video titles as well. Putnam was talking about the emergence of video a few months back and stated that they should be unveiling a portable video player prototype at the shareholders meeting. I love how EDIG is always planning ahead for future technologies. They began 5 years ago and haven't stopped. This release by the largest music label in the world is a great sign. Mark

To: JimC1997 who wrote (15134)	9/24/2000 2:10:08 PM
From: Jon Tara	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 18366

JimC, did you actually count? I doubt it! I certainly don't have the time to scroll through all of packers1's posts for the last 6 months, and I'm certain that as the CFO of a publically-traded company, you don't have the time either. I did look at his most recent 100 messages. And, while I didn't notice any conversations with RP in that batch, what it did reveal was astonding: packers1 eats, sleeps, lives, and breathes EDIG. He doesn't have a life - he has EDIG. My God! 100 posts in the last 5 days! And he posts continuously, day-in and day-out, on a schedule of 9 AM to 10PM, with posts spaced roughly evenly throughout the day. EDIG IS HIS FULL-TIME JOB! No, I don't think packers1 is RP. He can't be. There's no way that he'd have any time to fulfull hs job duties.