Interesting PR to say the least. Sorry if it has been posted before, but please READ THIS!!!!!!!
May. 07, 1999 (Electronic Engineering Times - CMP via COMTEX) -- Sunnyvale, Calif. - The nascent market for Internet audio is on a rapidly rising number of technology companies' play lists. In recent weeks, product announcements from Diamond Multimedia, Samsung Electronics, Lucent Technologies and RealNetworks have turned up the volume on an already buzzing market segment.
According to estimates, 120 technology companies are members of the Recording Industry Association of America's Secure Digital Music Initiative, the group hammering out a secure, rights-protected framework for the distribution of digital music. But the flurry of product announcements indicates that companies aren't waiting for SDMI's fast-track framework specification, expected to be released on June 30. Rather, they are busy creating products and forming business alliances that they hope will gain them a competitive edge in the 1999 holiday buying season's battle for eardrums.
Billions in business
The potential payoff is huge. "The distribution of bits may constitute as much as 10 to 15 percent of the U.S. music industry volume in a few years," Larry Miller, chief executive officer of AT&T's a2b music digital-music distribution service, noted in New York last week at a Silicon Alley Breakfast Club meeting that focused on the MP3 standard for Internet audio. "That could be a couple of billion dollars' [worth of] business."
Research suggests the world market for portable Internet players will exceed 1 million units this year. Massachusetts-based Forrester Research forecasts that portable MP3 players alone will achieve unit sales of 32 million by 2003.
One of the companies racing to get SDMI-compliant portable digital music players to market is Diamond Multimedia, which has already made a killing of sorts with its Rio PMP300 portable MP3 player, brought out last fall. Sources at Diamond's RioPort Division said the next-generation player, slated for release later this year, will integrate digital-rights-management technology from InterTrust Technologies Corp.
The RioPort division is responsible for the Rio PMP300 32-Mbyte player, the Rio Special Edition 64-Mbyte player and the RioPort.com Internet-music portal Web site. RioPort marketing specialist Bob Nelson said Diamond partnered with InterTrust because "we want to be the first one to get a secure portable MP3 player to market this year." He said Diamond will embed InterTrust's technology into the Rio player's firmware.
Rights-management technology electronically enforces copyrights and other rights to digital content and automates the underlying electronic-commerce processes. The InterTrust approach places the MP3 file in a digital security wrapper, called a digibox, that travels with the file when it is downloaded onto a PC and when it is moved to the portable player device. In the case of the Rio player, after the Rio Manager Software acknowledges the wrapped file, a dialog box pops up with a description of the rules of use set down by the content owner.
A rule may dictate, for example, that the file be locked after a certain usage time has elapsed. If a user sends the file to a friend via e-mail, the file would remain in the digibox wrapper, so the new user would similarly have to abide by the content owner's rules for usage.
Diamond's Nelson said the alliance with InterTrust doesn't preclude Diamond's use of other security technologies in future versions of the Rio player.
He declined to reveal other details about the next-generation platform but did say that it will be able to play all MP3 files. It will also include support for the Universal Serial Bus and increased memory capacity.
The company hasn't said whether it will offer current Rio consumers upgrades to the next-generation player, but Nelson said Diamond is considering such an upgrade offer.
Asked whether the timing of the announcement might be premature, since SDMI hasn't made a decision on a specification, Nelson said, "We are going to be SDMI-compliant, and InterTrust is also committed to being SDMI-compliant. We believe a lot of the security features that Inter-Trust's digital-rights-management technology offers will match up with the security features SDMI specifies."
He said both Diamond and InterTrust are willing to adjust their technology to fit SDMI requirements if necessary.
Executives at InterTrust wouldn't say whether SDMI has given their technology informal approval. But Tamal Shamoon, who works on advanced digital watermarking and security technologies for InterTrust, said the company's presentations at SDMI meetings have been well-received. He added that InterTrust expects SDMI's fast-track security specifications to be broad and inclusive rather than exclusionary.
10 hours of play
One company extending MP3's run is Samsung Electronics (Seoul, South Korea), which unveiled two models of its Yepp brand MP3 player. The models measure 58 x 85 x 17 mm and weigh 64 grams, excluding two AAA batteries, which will last for 10 hours of continuous play.
The tiny players are equipped with 40 Mbytes of memory, which Samsung claims is enough to store 10 songs of average length. Users can upgrade memory capacity with a Yepp smart card.
Samsung also added an FM radio, 160 minutes of recording capability and a telephone directory that can store 500 names. An LCD displays the title, length and lyrics of the song played.
Samsung said it built its own SecuMax security technology into the players to prevent users from pirating songs. It has also set up a dedicated home page with a variety of services for Yepp users.
The two models include a basic unit, the YP-E16, and a deluxe unit, the YP-D40, which is equipped with an FM tuner and the ability to record external sound, such as a lecture or performance. Both players have back-band headphones.
Samsung said it aims to sell 500,000 units in 1999 and to capture a 42 percent share of the world market for Internet audio players. That global market is expected to come in at 1.2 million units this year.
In addition to the portable Yepp models, Samsung plans a second-half introduction of a model for automobiles, as well as a recording station that converts music from CDs or cassette tapes to MP3 files without a computer.
Not all of the new offerings accommodate MP3 files. Last month, SDMI founding member Lucent Technologies introduced a Texas Instruments DSP-based, non-MP3 Internet-audio portable music player that only plays music that has been compressed using Lucent's Enhanced Perceptual Audio Coder (Epac). The player employs an operating and file-management system, called MicroOS, that was developed by e.Digital (San Diego), a contract design company that is building the handheld device for Lucent.
Lucent said the device will be ready for delivery to OEMs in time for Christmas. It promised that it will work with TI, also an SDMI founding member, to make sure the offering meets SDMI's first set of fast-track security specs.
The e.Digital device will use security technology from third-party vendors, including digital watermarking technology from Cognicity.
Epac licenses
Lucent said it is hammering out deals with Web sites and record labels to carry Epac-encoded music. It plans to license Epac to other device makers and to sell the e.Digital players to OEMs. DSP support for the e.Digital device is expected to be expanded to devices from Lucent Microelectronics and others.
In addition to the portable-player announcements, Real Networks Inc. (Seattle) last week announced a digital-music product that is said to optimize the PC for acquiring, playing and managing digital music.
Real Networks' Real Jukebox and Real System MP will allow consumers to create digital-music libraries from their personal CD collections. Consumers will initially be able to record music from CD files in MP3 and Real Audio G2 onto their PC's hard drive, play back the files and create a file-management system for organizing their music.
Real Jukebox is claimed to optimize the PC for playback of digital music selections. Real System MP is described as an open and extensible digital-music platform that enables integration with a wide range of Internet services and hardware devices.
At about 1.7 Mbytes, the Jukebox is smaller than Real Networks' Real Player but can manage thousands of songs. It's compatible with MP3 players from Diamond Rio and Creative Nomad and will support home-networking solutions for sharing of music among home PCs. Real Jukebox will also enable seamless portable device integration. It supports flash and other solid-state memory from portables.
As for security, Real Jukebox includes a default mechanism that encrypts files locally to the PC so that files created by one user cannot be shared with other PC users.
Real Jukebox became available for free download last week at www.real.com/products/realjukebox/index.html. Real Networks plans to announce support for the system from musicians, hardware vendors, Internet databases, e-commerce partners, security-solution pro-viders, music portal sites and music-search companies.
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