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Technology Stocks : GDNO - Goodnoise, the next KTEL? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ChrisZ who wrote (154)	6/1/1999 10:39:00 PM
From: jelrod3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 158

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.