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Someone's gonna pay for this
The post-Napster digital music world seeks sustainable business models.
Erik Sherman, Contributing Editor
http://www.commvergemag.com/commverge/issues/2001/200106/06f2.asp
In the last several months, online digital music has become synonymous with the court battles between Napster and the major corporations that own the record labels and, in turn, the music itself. At this point, Napster may be down for the count, unless its licensing of “fingerprinting” technology to prevent the trading of copyrighted songs keeps the courts off its back. If Napster does survive, its only remaining task would be to actually make money from digital distribution—a hurdle that, ironically, Napster’s recent adversaries also face.
The hullabaloo over Napster has had an unfortunate side effect: It has largely obscured many of the real issues, opportunities, and potential business models of an Internet Tin Pan Alley. To be successful in online music, companies will need to cast aside suppositions and perhaps find business models that few envision today.pp
First among the misconceptions of online digital music is that Napster and its ilk were the only companies smart enough to see the promise of digital music, while the major recording labels are nothing but ill-informed luddites.
“[The labels] are sophisticated people who are in charge of billion-dollar corporations,” says Ivan Hoffman, an intellectual-property lawyer who worked in the recording industry for 20 years “It’s glib to say they just don’t get it.” Being large corporations, the largest recording labels move slowly, and their actions often indicate little about their strategies. “We just see the actions, not the minutes of every meeting,” Hoffman adds.
“[The labels] desperately want to do digital distribution—there’s more money to make.”
Joe Vangieri, Visiosonic
This degree of invisibility makes it easy to misinterpret the actions the labels do take. “The record companies are not afraid of Napster,” says Joe Vangieri, CEO of Visiosonic, which makes software for professional DJs. “They desperately want to do digital distribution—there’s more money to make.”
Joe Vangieri
But there’s only money to be made if someone collects it and pays a share to the labels. “When the Napster thing took off the way it did, there was no permission given from anyone,” Vangieri says. “[Napster is] trying to ask for forgiveness after not getting permission.”
Napster’s meteoric rise put the labels into a problematic position. Because of their size and current business relationships, they cannot immediately change their business models. “Each major label owns its own distribution company and CD replication plant,” says Vivek Tiwary, president and CEO of StarPolish, a company that provides guidance and management tools to musicians. “It’s just not that easy to incorporate new technology into huge companies.” Tiwary also admits that the labels have also been “overly cautious to embrace technology.”
At this moment in time, the labels have little fear, because they own the material that people want. And ultimately, as the courts have shown in the Napster case, the recording companies must be included in the party. The real fear in the music industry lies elsewhere.
“I think that the people who are most frightened are the people on the physical distribution chain,” says Andy Grundy, president of Spun.com, an online music retailer. “For retailers and traditional distributors, digital distribution must seem like something out of a Halloween B movie. I think the real issue is the consolidation of a number of these retailers. If you can go online and find that [music] for a better price, why are you going to go to that mall store that’s trying to sell the CD for $17.98?” (See the sidebar, “Musical chairs.”)
But it’s far too early to predict the death of CDs and record stores. Consumers have proven time and again that they have an affinity for physical products and stores. It seems unlikely that they would suddenly boycott music stores. Napster has also so far lost in court. However, Hoffman still warns against complacency. “The reality is different than the legality,” he says. The legality is that Napster was held to be infringing. MP3.com was held to be infringing. To the extent that the other peer-to-peers become economically significant, they’ll be sued, too. The technology that Napster either unleashed or refined is here forever. Once the cat is out of the bag, the cat is out of the bag.”
Online alignments
Even though online distribution is not about to replace the existing music industry, it is going to cause changes—big changes. “I think this is fundamental,” Hoffman says. “And I don’t think anybody has grasped just how fundamental it is. The analogies that have been talked about have been in terms of the advent of the VCR and its impact on the motion-picture studies and television. I don’t think that’s even remotely in the ballpark.” VCRs left control of content largely in the hands of the movie studios. Sure, someone could copy a movie and give it to a friend. But now anyone can send relatively small audio files over the Internet and become a de-facto republisher.
Although the labels are not fond of moving quickly, they are caught in a fast-moving stream and left with the options of swimming or sinking. Because no one knows what arrangements will eventually work, the music companies are forming an overlapping set of alliances, often with competitors (see the sidebar, “Who’s in bed with whom”). The arrangements may look haphazard, but the day is young.
“Let’s be reasonable,” suggests Tom White, senior director of audio product marketing at InterVideo, which makes media-playing software for consumers. “We look at the record industry today; it’s been around how many years? It’s easy to look at the deals they’ve made and say it’s only two, but it’s only been a couple of weeks. It’s a lot more fun to just criticize them, but we have to step back and look at where they are today and where they will be.”
There is little doubt that they will be near large mounds of money. Yet the path toward that end is cloudy. The various industry alliances are considering various approaches. One is to provide a streaming service, where consumers would be able to listen to music online without downloading files to their hard drives.
Another model is to let people pay for downloading music. The labels remain hesitant to embrace that approach until they can find ways of preventing people from freely copying and sharing files. “Once the music hits the wire, you can’t protect it,” Vangieri says. “When Thomas Edison came up with his first cylinder [recorder], I’m sure there was someone in Philadelphia knocking off the cylinder. The simple business dictum is that control equals income. If I have the control, then I can keep my income.”
Technical disharmony
To have control, companies would either have to depend on the kindness of strangers, as a technical Tennessee Williams might say, or find ways to prevent unauthorized copying. The Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) is a trade organization of recording companies, artist associations, electronics firms, and software companies trying to create technology specifications, including watermarking (see the sidebar, “Hidden bits”), to prevent digital music from being copied.
“People have been used to getting a lot of things for free on the Internet. It has to change, because those who had provided free content are disappearing one right after the other.”
Michel Darnaud, Enition
Such a change in technology would require an immense shift, both by industry players and the public, which will be difficult to achieve in the near future. After all, popular media-playing software applications, programs that record CDs, and consumer-electronics devices will all need to adhere to the same standard, and even with the utmost in cooperation, the process will take considerable time.
There is no single leading candidate for the file format, and the likely struggles among companies will likely delay industry adoption of a standard. RealNetworks is touting its RealAudio 8 format. Microsoft is pushing its own Windows Media Audio format and reportedly planning to limit the sound quality of MP3s playing on Windows XP in order to goose things in its own direction. AT&T, Dolby Laboratories, Sony, and Fraunhofer Institut Integrierte Schaltungen have put forth the Advanced Audio Codec.
Vendors can only adopt what consumers are willing to buy. So far, that continues to be MP3 files, which companies could treat with a watermarking technology, if only the industry could agree on a standard.
“People seem to be very much in favor of MP3 files,” White says. “The content industry—the major labels that own 80 to 90 percent of the content people want to listen to—have been reluctant to do something [with MP3]. It’s very difficult to sell something that others are giving away.”
Variations on a theme
There is not much time to convince people that payment is reasonable. “People have been used to getting a lot of things for free on the Internet,” says Michel Darnaud, general manager for Enition, which provides systems that let companies charge for content. “There was an expectation that it would continue forever. It has to change because those who had provided free content are disappearing one right after the other.”
Some companies think that changing the basis of a business model makes more sense than trying to change consumer inclinations. InterVideo is trying to make otherwise free music files valuable enough to buy.
“A transportable file format is the key,” says White, whose company is currently working with MP3.com. “It may not be MP3 files forever, but right now it is. What we looked at was the ability to add additional content that was something you could not view or access over the CD [or online].” Examples would include such information as artist biographies or song lyrics. A file could even contain links to special offers on related music. By adding the data to MP3 files, consumers who had a special player would gain access to the premium content. Those who hadn’t paid would still hear the music on a regular MP3 player. “By adding these extra pieces of content, suddenly that is a unique experience that someone might want to buy,” White says.
Others hope that advertising might prove successful. Visiosonic, for example, offers a software-based MP3 player with buttons that link to things that might appeal to listeners, such as videos and music news. “We put ad banner technology into the product,” Vangieri says. “What we were selling for 49 bucks, we give away.”
“For retailers and traditional distributors, digital distribution must seem like something out of a Halloween B movie.”
Andy Grundy, Spun.com
To help sweeten the pot, Visiosonic also has paid offerings for DJs, who get access to a “record pool,” a downloadable source of music not available to the general public. These are pre-release versions of music that labels make available in return for reports back on the popularity of the tracks. For the companies, a record pool is a cheap way of promoting music.
Another company, Nextlec Broadband Solutions, is proving that people will also pay for streaming music. The company, working with Broadwing and MCI/WorldCom, provides audio and video streaming to niche music markets. Brian May, vice president of media services, says both live and archived streams are finding a market. And at a cost of between $20,000 and $25,000, Webcasting a show can turn a profit.
Which of these many models will prevail? Most likely, online music success will involve all of the models outlined here and more. “Music is a very rich economy,” says Talal Shamoon, executive vice president for business development at InterTrust Technologies, a rights-management vendor. “There’s a $40 billion value chain behind it. There’s going to be experimentation with different business models. There will be a hundred ways of buying a song.”
Who’s in bed with whom
Here are some of the alliances that are forming to address digital music.
Bertelsmann, which owns BMG, home of RCA and Arista, has agreed to license music to Napster.
Vivendi Universal SA, owner of Universal Music, and Sony have created a music service called Duet. Yahoo! will make the service available, at first offering streaming music, and eventually downloadable titles.
Bertelsmann, EMI Group, and AOL Time Warner (Warner Music) are licensing their songs non-exclusively to MusicNet, which is owned by these three companies as well as RealNetworks.
AOL Time Warner is also working with Vivendi and Sony to make a subscription service available.
Microsoft, through MSN, is planning an Internet-radio service.
Musicbank, which had agreements with all the major labels, ran out of money and folded, although its site was still up at the time of writing.
Sidebars:
Musical chairs
Aside from confusing consumer behaviors, unstable technical platforms, and unproven revenue models, there is a fundamental reason for the difficulty the digital music industry is having in establishing online businesses. To wit, the music industry represents one of the most complex, confusing sets of interrelated corporate entities ever to grace the carpet of a boardroom.
Most industries selling products to consumers have essentially well-defined roles. Manufacturers make products, either for their own consumer customers, or on a contract basis as the manufacturing arm for another company. Products move through distributors who, in turn, sell directly to stores or to wholesalers that then peddle products to the stores. Consumers shop at the stores, and the money flows back upstream.
In the music industry, there is no single manufacturer. One or more people generally write the songs, then make them available through publishers. Performers, most often not same people as the writers, choose material, go to studios, and record performances for a record label, to whom they contract. The label, which is the publisher of the recorded performance, reproduces the performances on a variety of media, including CDs and tapes. They sell the media to distributors, which, in turn, sell to the retail outlets that provide the consumer with music. As with most industries, the money moves back up to the labels, which are like manufacturers. In the case of music, the labels must pay portions of their revenues to the performers as well as to the music publisher, which then pays the composer and lyricist.
A problem occurs when the music is no longer tied to physical media, but moves over the Internet, potentially changing the entire distribution chain. Labels can either directly deal with the public or make deals with each other and online presences that embody the direct selling of a retailer and the extensive inventory capability of a distributor. But digital distribution means that the recording artists can also distribute music directly, as can the composer and lyricist.
In addition, the various entities in the music business have traditionally been wary of each other. Artists often complain about the way labels treat them. Composers and lyricists are wary about their work being used without them seeing any money for it. Labels are interested in making some profit while a performer is popular, in hopes of recouping the money it spent to promote the artist. Negotiations between groups regarding business arrangements will reflect these historic tensions.
Furthermore, the largest labels are divisions of bigger entertainment and telecommunications companies. Any distribution or reselling arrangements may be sweetheart deals between one division of a corporation and another, adding additional potential for mistrust into a system that will ultimately require cooperation if it is to work.
Hidden bits
Preventing unauthorized copying of digital music is difficult. There is no physical medium that can inform a player (hardware- or software-based) that a copy is legal or pirated.
Authentication data could be appended to the beginning or end of the files, or even inserted into the middle. That, however, highlights the existence of the data and makes it easier for someone to decipher and break the anti-copy scheme. Instead, companies are looking toward watermarking—the secret marking of files.
Watermarking is a form of steganography. The term is derived from the Greek steganos (sealed to be water tight) and graphos (writing). In steganography, one message is hidden within another. For example, a message could be encoded into a document using the initial letter of the fifth word in each sentence. Digital information provides entirely new places to place secret content.
At the heart of digital audio—or video or images—is a clever approximation. A series of bytes takes the place of the analog waveforms that our eyes and ears understand. In each byte, the bits typically vary in importance from one end of the byte to another. By choosing carefully, it is possible to change the values of some of the least-important bits in some bytes without perceptibly altering the sound.
Watermarking hides information in these least-important bits. The trick in thoroughly hiding the information is to scatter it throughout the file. Otherwise, someone could examine the least important bits as strings and look for non-random patterns that seem to have some meaning. Programs such as MP3Stego and S-Tools can hide information in a variety of file types, including WAV and MP3 audio files. To make things more difficult for prying eyes, a company may encrypt the data before inserting it into the audio file. That way, even if a snooper found the information, it would be useless.
Copy protection is not the only use developers can make of watermarking. Some companies are looking at placing other data, such as URLs, artist biographies, and recording session information, into the tracks. Digital files thus treated would offer value unavailable in a plain audio file.
We are the music makers
All the talk of record labels, distributors, and other companies leaves out the people who create the music in the first place. Musicians are trying find their fit in the new order.
Traditionally, many have had less than satisfactory relationships with their record labels. “I can tell you from contact with other musicians that it is difficult to work with the major record companies unless you’re a superstar,” says Aaron Rosand, a classical violinist who has been recording for decades.
Rosand has a “tremendously effective” Web site. “It’s like a one-stop shop, because everything is included,” he says. There is a discography, a biography, and links to buy his CDs. “I think that the free samples have stimulated a lot of sales in different parts of the world,” Rosand says. “[My] recordings in many parts of the world are not well distributed. Performing in Italy or other parts of Europe, people will say, ‘We can’t find your CDs in the shops.’ Now with the Internet, they can order it and receive it in days. So from my point of view, it has been a tremendous boon to my record sales.”
One of the appeals of the Internet for musicians has supposedly been the ability to directly market to people without help from a record label. But Rosand is an established artist with more than 40 years of recordings. Newer musicians don’t have the running start, nor the money necessary for the promotions and advertising that actually do sell CDs.
For those with some business savvy, though, the Internet offers some benefits. “Digital music is a tool,” says Vivek Tiwary, president and CEO of StarPolish, a company that provides guidance and management tools to musicians. “It’s not the be all and end all, but it’s a very powerful tool.” Artists can put together virtual listening parties for the cost of time and a computer. “Artists can get access to all those things and use all those things to build their careers in ways that weren’t possible before,” Tiwary says. By building their popularity, musicians also gain more leverage for negotiations with recording labels.
Author information
Contributing Editor Erik Sherman (esherman@reporters.net), when not pursuing writing or photography, longs for the days of the reel-to-reel tape recorder.
MIR's TechXNY PC EXPO report:
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=706676
EDIG first, then the keynote on handheld computing.
IBM booth:
Larry, Beth and I talked extensively with an IBM representative (out of San Jose) who is VERY familiar with EDIG. He said he has a “puck” in his office.
He is working on the large size micro drives (is that an oxymoron?) but he said there is a lot of excitement at IBM about the edigital reference design which was shown at CEBIT in Germany. (He gave me a contact name to get more info.).
He said IBM is working hard on the travelstar harddrive reference design and we should see the fruits of that in the market soon.
He liked my edigital shirt….and thought it was one of his. He was shocked that I had one...and wondered where I got it since he has one…with the IBM and edigital logos both…on it…. (hmmmmm….smile).
He asked us if we were connected to edigital? And when we said we were investors….he got all excited about the run-up January 2000 and when we talked about how we are holding a ton of shares he was happy for us and wished us good luck and told us to “remember the little guys.”
If I were to “connect some dots here”…it appears quite evident that edigital is actively working with IBM across several levels….and has been for a while. They are currently actively working on “at least” the travelstar hard drive music players.
IMATION booth:
Larry, Beth and I listened to two players at the Imation booth. One looked about the size of “half a mouse” and was square.. We speculate that might be a “home player” for connection to a PC. The gentleman also had one around his neck that had an IMATION label on it…but he laughed and said that was just for the show…it would have another brand when it hit the market. He anticipated players in the market from a lot of branded manufacturers and he rattled off a lot of names….(we already know them all).
He also showed us a mockup/;nonworking camera that will use dataplay disks. I asked him if edigital technology was in that. He suddenly stopped…gave the three of us …a sorta “stunned look”…then said…”no, we were not in the camera”.. I said…”oh, we are just in the audio players…then….??” And he said…”Yes”. No news there…but a nice confirmation.
We also checked out Compaq and swung over to look at Remote Solutions. David Ahn looked pretty miserable…(he might have been tired). The 6 gig PJB played but the 20 gig was not working. Very small table..manned by two people.
No real action going on there.
We also checked out Intel, Palm, HP (has a nice home entertainment center that was just announced), and a bunch of other companies.
Bluetooth as all over the show….WIRELESS is big, handheld computing is big, mobility is big.
Smile…Mary (very LONG)
Ahhh, here's some of the old posts re Dowon:
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=636556
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=643046
Cksla, that's actually fairly old; I stumbled across (and posted) this link a few months back:
http://www.dowontelecom.com/~eng/company/news_1.html
emit, that old link has vanished into the mist... but here's an entertaining one: http://www.delphiauto.com/pdf/delcopdfs/infotain_pc.pdf
Imation Showcases New Line of Digital Devices at PCExpo 2001; New Handheld Devices Ideal for Music and Digital Photography Applications
http://ny-web1.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/f_headline.cgi?day0/211772110&ticker=imn
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 26, 2001--Imation Corp. (NYSE:IMN), a worldwide leader in data storage and information management, today announced it will showcase a new line of hand-held, portable digital devices at PCExpo 2001 in Booth No. 3322, including the Imation RipGO!(TM), FlashGO!(TM) and DataPlay devices. The devices build on Imation's growing line of portable personal storage solutions developed to meet the demand of personal entertainment devices that support smaller form factor storage offerings.
"Digital music and photography enthusiasts are looking for smaller and more functional devices, without sacrificing removable storage capacity," said Stephen Carter, general manager of Imation's Personal Storage Solutions business. "Imation is at the forefront of this movement with offerings in consumer devices that offer greater portability and compatibility among today's smaller media formats."
Designed to fit in the palm of your hand, the Imation RipGO! is the smallest form factor available today for both recording MP3 music on CDs and for high-performance playback of CD, Digital Audio MP3 and Microsoft's WMA. Its sleek, battery-powered USB CD-RW drive uses mini (80mm) CD-R discs to store and play MP3 music files - allowing users to record three hours of MP3 quality music in less than five minutes. With multi-format audio capabilities, this drive has a playing time of three hours CD quality or six hours digital quality music. Featuring its ESP system, large LCD display and an advanced AVSL system, the RipGO! is ideal for music enthusiasts at home or on the GO! The Imation RipGO! will be available in September at a manufacturer's suggested retail price of $399.99 (actual pricing may vary).
The Imation FlashGO! is the world's first USB single-slot flash memory card reader/writer that supports all five flash memory card formats, including Compact Flash (Type I and II), Smart Media, Multimedia Card, Secure Digital, and Memory Stick, as well as IBM's Microdrive. This bus-powered device allows multi-device owners to rely on one reader/writer for all of their memory card digital information download and upload needs. FlashGO! features the ability to adapt to future miniature storage formats, making it ideal for users who own multiple products with different storage memory card formats. FlashGO! will be available in August 2001 with a manufacturer's suggested retail price of $79.99.
Imation will also showcase two DataPlay-enabled devices. Imation DiscGO! is a portable DataPlay device with USB connectivity that provides the exchange of digital content between multiple memory card formats and Imation DataPlay digital media without the use of a PC. The Imation USB DataPlay Recorder/Player provides stylish connectivity for PCs - allowing users to read and write personal content as well as play and view pre-recorded content from DataPlay digital media. Imation DataPlay digital media is designed to let users download and record 500MB of digital content - music, books, games, computer files - on a single disc and play it back on any DataPlay-enabled device, such as DiscGO!. A single Imation DataPlay digital media disc is capable of holding a staggering amount of information, whether it's hours of music, hundreds of photographs or volumes of written information, all with an estimated archival life of 100 years. DiscGO! is slated for commercial availability in Q4 2001.
About Imation Corp.
Imation Corp. is a $1.2 billion global company widely recognized as a leader in removable data storage and color image management.
Imation removable data storage offerings are a key ingredient in much of the world's technology infrastructure - from corporate data centers, to networks, to small businesses and home users. The product line is one of the broadest in the industry, with magnetic and optical products for the enterprise data center, the network environment, and the consumer. For business users, Imation magnetic tape cartridges deliver reliable data storage in data processing, backup and archive applications. Imation's storage consulting services help customers to improve performance, maximize efficiency, and minimize cost for a multitude of storage environments. Consumers use Imation's broad range of digital media, drives and accessories to store photos, data, music and more. On its own and through industry alliances, Imation continues to pioneer today's proven tape, optical and diskette technologies. Data storage revenues were $866 million in 2000.
Imation Color Technologies provides innovative proofing products, software for digital color control and value-added services that reduce cycle times and increase throughput for the graphic arts, creative, marketing communications, office and Internet markets. Building upon its industry-standard Matchprint proofing system, Imation now offers a wide range of digital and conventional Matchprint-branded systems to help professionals ensure accurate color reproduction from concept to final output. Imation works with a growing number of industry partners to embed its color calibration technology in OEM printing and copying devices. Color Technologies revenues were $273 million in 2000.
Imation Digital Solutions and Services (DSS) is focused in two areas - OEM Services and Document Imaging. Imation DSS services wide-format color and imaging equipment through relationships with large OEMs. In Document Imaging, Imation DSS is a system integrator for customers with wide-format engineering document imaging systems who are migrating from analog to digital systems. DSS revenues were $94 million in 2000.
As of March 31, 2001, Imation employed approximately 4,200 people worldwide. The Company has sales in over 60 countries with international revenues contributing 45% of total sales. Additional information about Imation is available on the Company's website at http://www.imation.com, or by calling Imation at 1.888.466.3456. To receive recent news releases, corporate information and related shareholder services, call Imation's shareholder information line at 1.888.IMN.NYSE (1.888.466.6973).
Certain information contained in this news release which does not relate to historical financial information may be deemed to constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause the Company's actual results in the future to differ materially from its historical results and those presently anticipated or projected. Among these factors are the Company's ability to meet its cost reduction and revenue growth targets, its ability to implement its restructuring program on a timely basis and to achieve the projected benefits, its ability to introduce new offerings in a timely manner, the competitive pricing environment, foreign currency fluctuations, the ability of Imation to secure adequate supply of certain high demand products, the ready availability and price of energy, the market acceptance of newly introduced product and service offerings, the rate of decline for certain existing products as well as various factors set forth in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
QUALCOMM Answers the Call as Major Sponsor of MP3 Summit 2001
World Leader of Digital Wireless Technology Joins Thompson Multimedia, Visteon And Others in San Diego for July 12 - 13 Event
MP3.com Will Give Selected Startups the Opportunity to Exhibit for Free
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/010625/lam093.html
SAN DIEGO, June 25 /PRNewswire/ -- The theme for MP3 Summit 2001, hosted by MP3.com, Inc. (Nasdaq: MPPP - news), is ``Mobilizing Your Music.'' Appropriately, the world leader of Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) digital wireless technology, QUALCOMM Incorporated, is confirmed to appear at this year's Summit as a major sponsor. For the latest information on MP3 Summit 2001 and to register, visit www.mp3.com/summit.
MP3 Summit 2001 is set to showcase new-generation wireless devices and technologies, and is slated to offer thought-provoking panelists and speakers from industry leaders. MP3 Summit 2001 is expected to attract an international gathering of digital music enthusiasts committed to influencing and shaping advances in the digital music space. Live entertainment, food and refreshments are all part of the MP3 Summit experience. For a sneak peek at one of the bands performing during MP3 Summit 2001, go to www.mp3.com/luckiestrike.
Also scheduled to join QUALCOMM as a major sponsor at the July 12 - 13 event in San Diego is Visteon Corp., a leading full-service supplier that delivers consumer-driven technology solutions to automotive manufacturers worldwide and through multiple channels within the global automotive aftermarket. Thompson Multimedia, maker of RCA-branded consumer electronics products including the RCA Lyra(TM) Personal Digital Players, also is a major sponsor of MP3 Summit 2001.
For the first time, MP3.com will offer a limited number of startup companies the opportunity to exhibit before Summit attendees -- at no cost. Start-ups interested in exhibiting are encouraged to email startup@mp3.com with compelling reasons why they should have a presence at MP3 Summit 2001. Those selected by MP3.com will be notified by July 2.
Other companies that want to secure sponsorship opportunities at the Summit should visit www.mp3.com/summit/2001/exhibits.html.
In addition to MP3 Summit 2001, MP3.com offers a variety of innovative business-related offerings explained in greater detail at www.mp3.com/b2b. Among these offerings is Radio Services (www.mp3.com/mp3radio), a multitiered program designed to bring the power of digital music to traditional radio outlets. The company's Music Licensing Program (www.mp3.com/musicsupervisor) is comprised of various services intended to allow music supervisors to shop for talent from the vast pool of MP3.com's artist community.
MP3.com's Mobile initiative (www.mp3.com/mp3mobile) continues to help shape the future of music distribution via wireless devices. And Audio Hosting (www.mp3.com/audiohosting) is designed to empower companies that want to add the magic of music to their offerings with access to the same high-quality technology that MP3.com relies on to deliver more than 1 million songs a day to music fans. Businesses also can take advantage of Business Music Services (www.mp3.com/bmscentral), which provides the music backdrop for retail environments.
To receive MP3.com emails via email or to unsubscribe from this service, visit pr.mp3.com.
About MP3.com
MP3.com, Inc. has created a unique and robust technology infrastructure designed to facilitate the storage, management, promotion and delivery of digital music. As the Internet's premier Music Service Provider (MSP), the company is dedicated to providing consumers with access to music when they want it, where they want it, using any web-enabled device. The company's web site hosts what MP3.com believes is the largest collection of digital music available on the Internet, with more than 1 million songs and audio files posted from over 150,000 digital artists and record labels. Dedicated to growing the digital music space, the company's products and services include on-demand Subscription Music Channels, an innovative Business Music Services program, a Syndicated Radio program and others. Additionally, through the company's MSP technology initiative and its music InterOperating System, MP3.com is partnering with a variety of forward-looking businesses to expand its digital music strategy. MP3.com's common stock is listed for trading on the Nasdaq National Market under the ticker symbol MPPP. MP3.com and MP3 Summit are trademarks of MP3.com, Inc. The company is based in San Diego, California. For more information on MP3.com, visit www.mp3.com.
Lyra is a trademark of RCA.
Statements in this press release that are not strictly historical are forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. These statements may include references to activities and events expected to occur in connection with MP3.com's proposed MP3.com 2001 Summit, as well as any products or services described in connection therewith or any benefits expected therefrom. These statements involve a high degree of risk and uncertainty, are only predictions, and actual events or results may differ materially from those projected in such forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause or contribute to differences include risks related to: MP3.com's litigation proceedings, including without limitation the inability to reach settlement with all parties to such proceedings; risks related to activities or events expected to occur in connection with MP3.com's proposed MP3 2001 Summit, as well as the products and services described in connection therewith or herein; the consummation of the contemplated business combination with Vivendi Universal, including the risk that the required regulatory clearances or other closing conditions might not be timely obtained, or satisfied; MP3.com's new and uncertain business model; acceptance of MP3.com's products and services; MP3.com's limited operating history; and MP3.com's rapid growth, as well as other risks detailed from time to time in MP3.com's reports to the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2000 and its most recent report on Form 10-Q.
For further information please contact Greg Wilfahrt, Director of Public Relations of MP3.com, 858-623-7280, pr@mp3.com.
Seven Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Developing Radios Using Agere Systems Chip Set for Sirius Service
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/010625/nym017.html
ALLENTOWN, Pa., June 25 /PRNewswire/ -- Agere Systems (NYSE: AGR.A - news), the world leader in communications semiconductors, today announced that seven consumer electronics manufacturers -- Alpine, Clarion, Delphi Delco, JENSEN, Kenwood, Panasonic and Visteon -- are developing radios that include Agere's chip set capable of receiving broadcasts from Sirius Satellite Radio (Nasdaq: SIRI - news).
Agere has shipped engineering samples of the chip set to all seven manufacturers. Production chip sets are expected to be shipped in early fall of this year. The satellite radios are designed to give the nation's more than 200 million vehicles access to Sirius' up to 100 channel audio entertainment service, which includes 50 channels of commercial-free music and 50 channels of news, sports, talk, comedy and children's programming.
``Agere's chip set is the culmination of the development and integration of innovative technologies that have been custom-designed for satellite radio,'' said Bob Rango, general manager of new business initiatives for Agere Systems. ``Working closely with Sirius and radio manufacturers on this chip set was key to developing the critical feature and performance mix needed to make this new mobile audio application technically feasible and able to deliver digital quality radio to listeners.''
The integrated chip set combines a unique set of technologies that enable mobile reception of satellite signals. These technologies include the dynamic combining of a coded orthogonal-frequency division multiplexed (COFDM) band for signals broadcast from ground antennas; and two time-division multiplexed quadrature phase shift keyed (TDM-QPSK) bands to reliably receive signals broadcast from three satellites.
Agere's chip set combines radio and intermediate frequency (RF/IF) demodulation, analog-to-digital conversion (ADC), complex digital signal processing and control functions, and digital audio decoding -- all in a single, complete integrated chip set, implementing three concurrent receivers. The chip set's wideband RF circuits allow receivers to demodulate a 12.5 Megahertz (MHz) spectrum in the S-band (2.3 GHz), consisting of two TDM satellite signals and a COFDM terrestrial signal. Each of these signals carries identical information and is demodulated with the full aggregate payload. This redundancy allows reliable reception through use of an innovative maximal ratio combiner (MRC), which proportionally combines the three signals for optimal quality. An innovative buffer management scheme addresses problems unique to satellite reception such as resolving Doppler and time delay.
The high sound quality of the new receivers is enabled by Perceptual Audio Coding (PAC), developed by Bell Labs, the research and development arm of Lucent Technologies, and commercialized by Agere Systems for this digital radio application. Named satellite PAC (sPAC)*, the technology processes and digitally compresses high fidelity stereo music (stereophonic audio) and monophonic audio transmission (such as talk radio) from 1.41 Mbits/s to bit rates as low as 24 Kbits/s. Data transmission modes are also supported for future telematics applications such as traffic advisories. The high compression of the sPAC technology enables up to 100 channels of programming to be transmitted simultaneously. In addition, a statistical multiplexer integral to sPAC ensures that each channel is transmitted in high quality by assigning the available bandwidth to channels with the greatest need.
Agere's chip set processes the aggregate multi-channel, encrypted, and error correction coded satellite and terrestrial signals to decode any one of 100 audio channels. Each channel is decoded with audio as well as program descriptive text, such as channel name, song title, and song artist. Receivers designed with the Agere chip set will be able to capture digital signals from satellites and terrestrial repeaters broadcasting Sirius' service. The Sirius transmission system uses three independent transmission signals, two from satellites at any given moment and one terrestrial. Each contains an audio bandwidth of approximately 5.0 Mbits/s. By transmitting with time, frequency, modulation, and space diversity, these independent transmission signals will help assure robust reception virtually anywhere, anytime in the continental U.S.
Agere Systems Inc., formerly the Microelectronics Group of Lucent Technologies, is the world leader in semiconductors for communications applications. Lucent has announced it intends to spin off Agere Systems as an independent company. Agere Systems offers integrated optoelectronics and integrated circuits solutions to help customers reduce the time and expense of developing new communications equipment. It also provides wireless computer networking solutions through its ORiNOCO product line. More information about Agere Systems is available from its Web site at http://www.agere.com.
sPAC is a registered trademark of Agere Systems.
Agere Safe Harbor Statement
This release contains forward-looking statements based on information available to Agere as of the date hereof. Agere's actual results could differ materially from those results stated or implied by such forward-looking statements due to a number of risks and uncertainties. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, completion of the distribution of Agere stock by Lucent Technologies Inc., price and product competition, keeping pace with technological change, dependence on new product development, reliance on major customers and suppliers, customer demand for our products and services, availability of manufacturing capacity, components and materials, control of costs and expenses, general industry and market conditions and growth rates and general domestic and international economic conditions including interest rate and currency exchange rate fluctuations. For a further discussion of these and other risks and uncertainties, see the prospectus filed by Agere with the Securities and Exchange Commission on March 28, 2001. Agere disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
SOURCE: Agere Systems Inc.
EMI Music Publishing Grants License to FullAudio for Digital Music Subscription Service
Catalog-Wide License with World's Largest Music Publisher for FullAudio's Cache-Download Subscription Service
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/010625/2157.html
NEW YORK and CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 25, 2001-- FullAudio today announced a licensing agreement with EMI Music Publishing, the world's largest music publisher, and winner of the ``Publisher of the Year'' Award in 2001, a significant step in FullAudio's effort to secure legal content from all music publishers and all five major record labels.
FullAudio is one of the only music service providers to remain independent of the major media companies, offering the industry and consumers a service free of competing interests. This license with EMI Music Publishing allows FullAudio to provide consumers with tracks to which EMI Music Publishing controls the digital rights in the compositions. The non-exclusive agreement licenses EMI Music Publishing compositions to FullAudio's unique cache-download, subscription service.
``We at EMI Music Publishing have always believed that the Internet will enable consumers to find and listen to the music they love in new and more convenient ways. So it is a great pleasure when we are able to support a new service like FullAudio's online subscription service which holds the prospect of doing exactly that,'' said Martin Bandier - Chairman and CEO of EMI Music Publishing.
``This agreement pushes us toward achieving our goal of being the first independent company to deliver a fully integrated, digital music subscription service with licenses from all music publishers and labels,'' said Chris Copeland Gladwin, Chairman and CEO of FullAudio. ``With our cache-download technology complete, EMI Music Publishing brings us that much closer to giving consumers the digital music service they have been waiting for.''
Cache-Download vs. Streaming Technology
FullAudio's patent-pending solution provides a higher-quality music experience than the streaming music services that are or soon will be on the market. FullAudio's music service offers consumers two distinct advantages over streaming providers. First, whereas the listening quality of streaming music is only as good as a user's Internet connection, FullAudio delivers superior sound quality, regardless of connection speed. Second, FullAudio enables consumers to play tracks when they're not connected to the Internet, allowing them to take music with them on the go.
The FullAudio Subscription Service Model
FullAudio is creating a subscription service to provide a unique, cache-download platform, available as a stand-alone service or provided to distribution partners as the engine for their own co-branded, consumer digital music service. FullAudio's service strategy includes securing digital rights from music publishers, such as EMI Music Publishing, and all five major and independent record labels to add legal content to the offering it provides to its partners. FullAudio has begun internal testing of its service.
For a monthly fee, the FullAudio subscription service provides fans with unlimited play of a set number of tracks (subscription ``slots'') they choose. Much like the subscription models of cable television, fans will have access to their FullAudio music service only as long as their account is in good standing. Also very much like cable, FullAudio offers varying levels of subscription service, providing fans with competitive pricing options related to the amount of music to which they choose to subscribe. The higher the level of subscription (Silver, Gold, Platinum), the more slots consumers are given to fill with their favorite and new music. Music transferred to fans through the FullAudio service is unlocked from the memory on the consumer's PC by the FullAudio service, a seamless process for easy listening when the subscription is maintained.
About EMI Music Publishing
EMI Music Publishing is EMI Music Publishing is the world's largest music publishing company. EMI's writers include: Janet Jackson, Lenny Kravitz, Diane Warren, Sting, Rod Stewart, Aerosmith, Gloria Estefan, Depeche Mode, Counting Crows, Third Eye Blind, Matchbox 20, Puff Daddy, Jay-Z, Hootie and the Blowfish, Blur, Texas and Jamiroquai.
About FullAudio
FullAudio Corporation is a digital music subscription service company working with the music industry, artists and songwriters to create a legal and secure means to distribute music to consumers. Delivering diverse content from the industry's leading record labels and other music resources, FullAudio provides a personal service that allows fans to discover new music, create their own collections, and listen to digital music on PCs and a range of portable devices. FullAudio's unique music subscription service platform provides its distribution partners with the ability to offer the FullAudio music service on the products they deliver to consumers.
Founded in April 1999, FullAudio's advisors and investors include Larry Rosen, both founder and CEO of N2K, the company behind Music Boulevard, and co-Founder and CEO of GRP records; Joel Schoenfeld, former general counsel and SVP of BMG Entertainment; Randy Komisar, who helped launch both TiVo and WebTV; Kettle Partners; New Enterprise Associates; and Venture Strategy Partners. For more on the company, please visit www.fullaudio.com.
SanDisk Introduces 128 Megabyte Secure Digital Flash Memory Card
Business Editors/High-Tech Writers
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/010625/0192.html
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 25, 2001--SanDisk Corporation (Nasdaq:SNDK - news) today introduced the 128 megabyte (MB) Secure Digital (SD) Memory Card, a removable, stamp-sized flash memory card capable of storing up to four hours of music or 40 minutes of video. SanDisk's announcement, made at the PC EXPO show, doubles the capacity of SanDisk's highest capacity SD cards currently shipping. SanDisk is demonstrating products at the show in the Palm Pavilion (booth 3722) at the Javits Center.
Thomas Climer, SanDisk's SD card product manager, said, ``The SD card is rapidly emerging as the universal storage card for portable digital devices such as the Palm handheld computers, digital cameras, digital video camcorders, audio players and cell phones. As these memory cards are commonly shared between devices, higher capacity cards are becoming increasingly important among consumers who want to store more data, images, music files and even video on their cards. With the introduction of the 128MB card, users will have the capability of storing up to four hours of music, over 100 high-quality digital images or more than 40 minutes of MPEG-4 compressed video.''
Connie Wong, director of special services at Semico Research Corp., Phoenix, said, ``The strong consumer electronics market continues to demand higher capacity storage cards. The availability of higher capacity cards makes them much more feasible for applications such as digital video camcorders which require considerable storage. This high capacity also allows consumers to buy fewer cards, making it more convenient for consumers to use the cards. At the same time, the cards are becoming so much more cost effective that eventually consumers will be able to store as many audio, video and data files they want at a very reasonable price.''
More than 50 new consumer electronic products with slots for SD Cards have been introduced by leading consumer companies including Canon, Casio, JVC, LG Electronics, Palm, Panasonic, Sharp and Toshiba. Several more SD-based products are expected to be launched at the PC EXPO show. SanDisk is one of more than 275 industry companies who belong to the Secure Digital Association (www.sdcard.org), an organization promoting the SD Card as an open industry standard.
SanDisk is currently shipping 8, 16, 32 and 64MB SD Cards and expects to start production shipments of the new 128MB SD Cards in the third quarter of this year. The suggested retail price of the card will be $200.
The SD Card is a flash memory storage device with built-in security functions designed to facilitate the secure exchange of content between devices and the card. It is 32 millimeters (mm) long, 24mm wide and 2.1mm thick.
SanDisk Corporation, the world's largest supplier of flash data storage products, designs, manufactures and markets industry-standard, solid-state data, digital imaging and audio storage products using its patented, high density flash memory and controller technology. SanDisk is based in Sunnyvale, Calif.
The matters discussed in this news release contain forward looking statements that are subject to certain risks and uncertainties as described under the caption, ``Factors That May Affect Future Result'' in the company's annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The companies assume no obligation to update the information in this release.
SanDisk's web site/home page address: http://www.sandisk.com
DataPlay Appoints Trans World Entertainment Chairman to Board of Directors
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/010625/sfm028.html
BOULDER, Colo., June 25 /PRNewswire/ -- DataPlay, Inc., a leader in the digital media space, announced today the appointment of Robert J. Higgins to its board of directors. Higgins, the founder of Trans World Entertainment Corp. (Nasdaq: TWMC), has served as Trans World's chairman and chief executive officer since its inception in 1972.
As chairman and CEO of Trans World Entertainment, Higgins oversees the management of 1,000 retail outlets located throughout the United States. Of these, 750 are mall outlets, including Camelot, Record Town and The Wall, all soon to be united under one brand name "FYE, For Your Entertainment" later this year. Freestanding stores are operated under the brands Coconuts, Spec's and Strawberries.
Under Higgins' direction, Trans World has grown from one retail store in 1973 into a nationwide organization that employs more than 10,000 people and operates stores in 45 states.
Active in his community, Higgins is a former chairman and current board member at Albany Medical Center, northeastern New York's only academic health sciences center. He is also vice-chairman of the Saratoga Performing Arts Center which promotes an appreciation of the performing arts among members and the community at large.
"Bob's proven leadership within the retail industry is a tremendous asset for DataPlay's distribution partners since they will be targeting the retail channel when DataPlay digital media and devices become available to consumers later this year," said Steve Volk, chairman and CEO of DataPlay. "Bob's retail industry experience rounds out the collective experience of our Company's board, which already boasts luminaries from the worlds of music, technology and venture capital."
DataPlay's current board members include Larry Kenswil, President of Global Electronic Commerce and Advanced Technology for Universal Music; Tom Washing, General Partner of Sequel Venture Partners; Jerome Contro of Tango Venture Capital; and Steve Volk, chairman and CEO of DataPlay.
Working in partnership with leading content providers and consumer electronics manufacturers, DataPlay anticipates its digital media containing pre-recorded music to be available beginning 4th Quarter 2001, coinciding with the availability of DataPlay-enabled consumer electronic devices and blank media.
EDIG: Info for Investors (6/24 PM rNO)
General DD Info (Corporate profile, SEC filings, Patents, lots more):
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=66673 (revised 3/8)
Recent News and Opinions:
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=703344 (MOT & CPQ closing in on HD-based jukebox launches)
http://www.extremetech.com/article/0,2299,apn%253D2%2526s%253D1038%2526a%253D1623%2526ap%253D1,00.as... (Excellent intro to VTT tech)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=132506 (OpenGlobe partners w/Thomson/RCA)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=132074 (Sentinel chats w/Putnam)
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2001/tc20010621_702.htm (BusinessWeek article; see Related Items links also)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=131776 (Interview with EMI's New Media V-P)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=130822
and http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=132639 (HP expands digital entertainment initiative)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=130770 (DABOSS & murrayhill re Lanier)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=130709
and http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=701876 (Shareholders visit EDIG)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=130701 (RNWK unveils digital rights standard, products)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=130423 (Mobile Conversay SDK unveiled)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=130347 (Codec battle continues)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=129891 (DataPlay finalizes agreements w/Imation)
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIGLONG&read=3752 (Eastech aiming for July jukebox release)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=128599 (Thomson releases insecure MP3Pro)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=128649
and http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=128814 (Some Sensory stuff)
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=698591 (Sinman chats w/Putnam)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=128160 (Kenwood introduces WMA/MP3 entertainment hub)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=127988 (Olympus MP3/WMA/voice recorder)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=128309 (Vedalabs stuffs cat back in bag)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=127972 (Iomega is hip to TXN DSPs)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=127643 (New multimedia PDA from Toshiba)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=127591 (Treo up for FCC certification?)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=127390 (Seiko Mobile Entertainment 'Me-ism')
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=127295 (Duet name changed to PressPlay)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=127288 (New DataPlay write-up)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=126957 (TI?Sensory speech synthesis deal)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=126435 (Archos adds encoding to jukebox)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=126460 (cindere11y speaks w/Putnam)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=126430 (Upside article re RNWK)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=125842
and http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=126410
and http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=127265 (Compaq adds to digital audio line)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=125896 (BusyBump chats w/Putnam)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=125380 (Eastech e-mail re jukeboxe plans)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=125279 (Fortune article re digital music)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=125231 (Cisco gets Real)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=125215 (NY Times interview w/ BMG CEO)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=125201 (Panasonic SD card pricies to fall)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=125162 (Backgrounder on set-top boxes)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=124985
and http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=124986 (A look at Conversay's speech engine)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=124909 (Wired article re Napster)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=124819 (Toshiba maps flash strategy)
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=693968 (LQID VP sees a multi-codec future)
EDIG news and opinions (pre-6/9/01):
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=128798
2000 DD Summaries:
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=126095 (12/21/99 to 3/6/00)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=126094 (3/7/00 to 4/10/00)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=126093 (4/11/00 to 6/4/00)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=126076 (6/5/00-9/7/00)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=126074 (9/8/00-10/31/00)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=126069 (11/1/00-12/31/00)
Common Abbreviations:
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIGOT&read=4488
A look back at the early days on RB:
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=642371
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Treo review compilation: http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=612321
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EDIG Private board at RB:
(Basher-free, open to all who behave themselves)
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=300337 (Instructions for joining)
Free EDIG news e-mails via eGroups:
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=570639
Moderated EDIG boards (no bashers/spammers):
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/board.asp?board_id=299
http://www.siliconinvestor.com/stocktalk/subject.gsp?subjectid=51056
athomedad's EDIG Page:
http://www.edigpage.com
OT: Workdog1, check your mailbox here at IHub.
OT: E-Services Infrastructure Project Leader
Job updated on..:06/14/2001
703405
Lead HP-IT into the new era of e-services and personal information
appliances! Focus on leading the design and implementation of
infrastructure for EPS business initiatives, with an initial project for
the Internet Digital Entertainment Center and CDRW Portal. Work with
business leaders to develop plans that both support their objectives and
demonstrate the business use of personal appliances. Work closely with R&D
to manage the e-services architecture and lifecycle to ensure that
e-services are secure, scaleable, supportable, and properly integrated with
critical enterprise systems and processes. Lead integration projects for
e-services applications on HP-UX, Linux and Windows NT. Provide technical
design, consulting, and support. As necessary, manage engineers to guide
infrastructure design, implementation, and support of global processes.
Demonstrate and propagate a culture of teamwork, enthusiasm, technical
excellence, business focus, speed, and accountability.
Experience Required: - BS in Computer Science, MIS or related field
-Total 5 years of experience preferably in the field of e-commerce or
internet area -Successful experience leading complex projects and
implementing new processes in technology organizations. -Ability and
willingness to lead and influence without clear authority when necessary
-Demonstrated ability to quickly grasp new technologies and tools and apply
them to business needs -Current knowledge of information technology for
both business applications and infrastructure, and the ability to apply
this knowledge to quick and effective decision-making -Demonstrated ability
to lead people and teams -Excellent written and spoken communication skills
-Proven ability to effectively work across functions and organizations
-Demonstrated passion for effective information technology for business
competitive advantage - Solid knowledge and working experience with markup
language (HTML, DHTML, PHP3) - Solid knowledge and working experience with
programming & script languages such as Java, Javascript, CGI, Perl and
Client (Active-X, Applets) & Server side programming - In depth technical
knowledge of foundation building blocks such as Web Server, Application
Server and platforms such as HP-UNIX, NT, Linux, etc. - In depth technical
knowledge of PC and other appliance platforms and related technologies
including windows operating systems (9*, 2000, NT and CE) and application.
- Desired: -Masters Degree in CS, MIS or related field -Experience leading
a similar global infrastructure project -Several years of people/program
management experience in a distributed organization - Conceptual
familiarity with B2C and B2B interactions - Familiarity with emerging
markup languages such as XML, ebXML, XML schema, WML and other wireless
technologies such as WAP and micro-browser etc.
Location: Colorado, Fort Collins - California bay area, Palo Alto -
The New Napster? Next Generation MP3 Swapping Rages On
By Seth M. Cohen
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/DailyNews/010615_fileshare_mp3.html
June 18 — If Napster is a thorn in the side of the recording industry, then BearShare may be the guillotine poised to slice its neck.
Just months after a federal appeals court ordered Napster to cease its dealing in copyrighted music, a new breed of file sharing is rapidly gaining popularity. The burgeoning swap services are even more elusive, and, for now, unstoppable.
"There are going to be these thousands of parallel distribution universes," says Rob Batchelder, an analyst with the Gartner Group in Stamford, Conn. "The genie's out of the bottle."
If the Recording Industry Association of America had its wish, it might eradicate file sharing for good. But a new report by PC Pitstop, an Internet marketing firm, finds that file-swapping alternatives are increasing as users migrate away from Napster.
With Napster suffocating in litigation, its 70 million users are flocking to other file sharing galaxies like Gnutella (pronounced New-tella), or BearShare, to download MP3s, which are compressed digital audio files that play at CD quality.
PC Pitstop expects the growth to continue among the alternatives in the coming months, as Napster scrambles by court order to filter out copyrighted titles and more users abandon the service.
This mass migration is rooted in what many consider to be the next killer Internet application: Peer-to-Peer (aka P2P). Venture capitalists and visionaries alike are pouring money and brainpower into creating business-class P2P services to capitalize on the movement.
Napster's Weak Spot
While Napster is a P2P application, it is vulnerable to regulation since its services are centralized and can be halted with the flip of a switch. In what is referred to as a hub-and-spoke environment, its central servers (the hubs) locate myriad MP3 files that connect to spoke-like users who have those media on their own computers. Without the hubs, Napster stalls, making it an easy legal target.
Desperate to stay afloat, Napster recently entered into an agreement with three major record labels to legitimize its service through a fee-based system. But Napster users are looking for a free — not fee — solution. And it hasn't taken long to find it.
Obstacles to pay-for-play.
What's GNU?
Enter Gnutella. Created and briefly released on the Web last year by programmers at America Online (AOL), it spread like wildfire before an embarrassed AOL managed to yank it away. But it was too late. To date, Gnutella has been cloned and distributed across the Web by millions of users.
Gnutella is a free, open-source method of sharing files and programs. Unlike Napster, Gnutella is a decentralized system — it is not a company, there are no servers, and there is no CEO to hold accountable.
And even as Gnutella struggles to improve its speed and transfer reliability, applications like BearShare, which utilize the Gnutella technology, are taking hold.
Once BearShare is installed on your hard drive, it locates other BearShare users with whom you may exchange media such as MP3s, image files and other file types, without anyone attached to that cluster. In layman's terms: what has no switch can't be turned off.
BearShare, Gnutella and other applications like it are getting the RIAA's attention. If Napster — the easy target — is slowly being tamed, what to do about this new, decentralized, unyielding beast?
"There is definitely legal basis on which we can address this," says Cary Sherman, senior executive vice president and general counsel for the RIAA, which was directly involved in the litigation against Napster.
"As a rule of thumb, 80 percent of the files are provided by 20 percent of the users. We could therefore target enforcement efforts at the 20 percent of people spreading most of the files," he says.
Potentially, then, if all Napster users migrated to Gnutella, the RIAA would have to file suit against 20 percent of 70 million people, a proposition that Norman Zivin, an intellectual property attorney in New York City, thinks is outlandish.
"As a matter of enforcement, I'd frankly be surprised if they started suing individuals," Zivin says. "First, it won't make them any friends, and it's not cost efficient. One just can't sue millions of individuals since the damages from any one person is not significant."
Usage of BearShare and Gnutella may very well boom in the months to come. In a recent article, CNET.com estimated that in the month of April, 30,000 people were sharing files at any given moment on BearShare.
Technical Fixes Explored
Sherman says the RIAA has considered implementing certain "technical measures" but would not discuss the logistics of any plans at enforcing copyright laws.
The most likely enforcement mechanism might be to track and record a user's IP address (the location of a machine within a network), and then somehow block the user from accessing the service.
But Michael Andrews, a computer consultant in Baton Rouge, La., sees flaws in this approach.
"Although Gnutella will reveal the infringer's IP address, it's far from a digital fingerprint since many broadband service providers (such as Time Warner's Road Runner) assign these addresses dynamically."
Since a dynamic IP address is one that constantly changes, a blocked user might be able to access the system only seconds later — once his IP address is refreshed.
Further complicating efforts at enforcement, new BearShare-like systems are designed much like the childhood "Telephone Game," where you only know the existence of the computer next to you. In all likelihood, the adjacent computer didn't provide the copyrighted material — instead it was another computer far off on the network that just used your neighbor as an index and/or courier.
According to Andrews, this issue might prevent enforcers from knowing who the actual copyright violator is.
Share With the Bear
While enforcement efforts remain vague, BearShare and other services like Aimster, are rocketing Net-wide, providing a seamless interface and a multitude of MP3s by virtually any artist. For example, at 7 p.m. ET on a recent night, a search for "BILLY JOEL" turned up more than 3,700 entries — Joel's entire collection, plus bootlegged concert songs and other live appearances.
"BearShare is better than Napster ever was," says a source from a software development company in Boston who wished to remain anonymous. "There are more songs, better download speeds, and it's just superior."
But Sherman insists BearShare and Gnutella have limitations, including major security flaws.
"Gnutella has security risks. People don't know who they are dealing with, how their privacy might be invaded, or who is planting viruses on their computers. As security and privacy becomes more of an issue on the Internet, consumers will be more and more inclined to go to legitimate sites, where it is secure and where artists will get paid."
But Sherman also acknowledges that millions of users are still looking to share music. And there are no signs of that slowing down.
HP to announce Linux MP3 stereo
16:07 Thursday 21st June 2001
Matthew Broersma
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,s2089639,00.html
Hewlett-Packard's Digital Entertainment Center is the latest attempt to combine the ease-of-use of consumer electronics with the flexibility of the PC
Next week Hewlett-Packard is to unveil the prototype for a high-end, standalone home MP3 player based on Linux in an effort to establish a niche in the increasingly fuzzy market between consumer electronics and PC peripherals.
The device, called the HP Digital Entertainment Center, is aimed at letting users download and play Internet music files, mainly MP3 tracks, without a PC. It is designed to fit in with standard component stereo equipment, but is capable of connecting to a television for a larger display and to a PC via Ethernet or a HomePNA network. The HomePNA (Home Phone Networking Alliance) standard creates a 1mbit/s network over home phone wiring, though it currently only works in the US.
The device also includes a CD-RW drive for storing and loading music onto its 40GB hard drive, a 56K modem and a fluorescent display that can be used to browse HP's portal for downloadable tracks.
It runs on a 566MHz Celeron processor with 64MB of RAM and is built around Intel's 810 chipset.
As for the operating system, Digital Entertainment Center uses the Linux 2.4 kernel and X Window system, with a custom graphical user interface. HP said that rather than releasing the device's users into the wilds of the Internet it has created a "walled garden", XML-based portal on which streaming video, songs and song information can be downloaded, Internet radio stations can be located and playlists can be set up.
It will be demonstrated for the first time at next week's Tech X (formerly PC Expo) in New York City.
HP is not the first to announce such a device, though the market for standalone MP3 hardware is nascent: Nokia and Be, among others, have announced standalone multimedia devices.
HP says the device will sell for under $1,000 (about £700) and will be available in time for this Christmas.
Duke, FWIW:
"...to invest successfully over a lifetime does not require a stratospheric IQ, unusual business insights, or inside information. What's needed is a sound intellectual framework for making decisions, and the ability to keep emotions from corroding that framework." - Warren Buffett
Packers, in the past 2 weeks, approximately 2.6 million shares have been traded. Since the price movement over that time has been minimal (-$0.06), one might suppose that there were roughly equal sells versus buys. In other words, only about 1% of the issued shares have been sold, and those were purchased by others. I see no reason to alter my opinion of this stock based upon such insignificant activity. If you are allowing emotions to creep into your financial calculations and strategies, IMHO you are making a big mistake. As I said before, however, that's not my problem. My apologies to the board for wasting a post on a non-issue.
Steve, IMHO Hy Tek is small potatoes. What they do or don't do will have little effect in the larger scheme of things. There are much larger fish to fry. As to the "Longs selling" garbage, so what? That's their problem, not mine.
The BS stops here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tinroad/files/treo_H_S.jpg
BS posts removed.
A Real Threat to Microsoft?
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2001/tc20010621_315.htm
RealNetworks' slew of new deals with major players could make its software a solid standard, dealing a blow to archrival Gates & Co.
Sometimes being the underdog isn't so bad. Take RealNetworks (RNWK ), which is locked in a fierce battle with Microsoft (MSFT ) to dominate the market for audio- and video-streaming software. RealNetworks recently signed deals with some powerful Microsoft competitors that have caught the attention of analysts and could reap handsome returns if the economy start to improve.
What's to like? Consumer-electronics maker Sony recently agreed to add Real software to its PlayStation II system, which competes with Microsoft's new Xbox video-game console. Hewlett Packard, too, will build Real into its new digital-entertainment devices.
The deals don't end there. On June 20, Real announced a new digital-rights management package to be created with such partners as Sun Microsystems, Adobe, and IBM -- all companies eager to put the Microsoft juggernaut in dry dock. Real also has new agreements with Nokia to add streaming software to mobile-phone handsets and with Cisco to build streaming capability into its Internet routers. "Cisco's routers make up 80% of the whole Internet," says Phil Benyola, a digital-media research associate at Raymond James. "When you have Real software included in every router, it really starts to become a standard."
"VALUABLE THORN." Perhaps most important, RealNetworks has media behemoth AOL Time Warner in its corner. Real's streaming software became a key point of contention between AOL and Microsoft. The Colossus of Redmond wanted its own player incorporated into America Online's Internet service. AOL insisted on sticking with Real. The upshot: "For AOL, RealNetworks is a valuable thorn in the side of Microsoft," says CIBC World Markets analyst John Corcoran.
To hear both Real and Microsoft tell it, all this maneuvering is strictly business. "Certainly, some people are going to competitively align against us, and that is to RealNetwork's benefit, I suppose," says Will Poole, vice-president of the Windows digital-media division at Microsoft. Poole points out that Microsoft has plenty of technology partners, too, and no shortage of distribution of its streaming software.
Real attributes all of its recent deals to the strength of its technology. "We all agree that having a choice in this space is a good thing," says Steve Banfield, who heads Real's consumer products division. He says Real's focus isn't on Microsoft, which bundles its Windows Media Player with its operating system. "I have 200 million customers to keep happy," he says, referring to the number of personal-computer users worldwide who have downloaded the RealPlayer.
SELLING CONTENT. Some analysts like what they see. True, gone are the days when strong partnerships were enough to spur an Internet stock. And in this year's difficult environment for software sales, Real's stock has remained stuck between $5 and $10 after tumbling during the dot-com meltdown from its split-adjusted peak of $91 in January, 2000.
Investment firms Raymond James and Thomas Weisel Partners both upgraded Real's stock in May, citing the revenue potential for two of its newer businesses. In less than a year Real has signed up an impressive 200,000 customers to its $9.95 a month GoldPass service, which allows customers to watch sports programs and other broadcast content on their PCs.
"We've proven that people will pay for content on the Web," says Banfield, who says Real will broaden the service. Observes Corcoran: "If they get up to a million subscribers, it will start to be a real business for them."
Then there's MusicNet, a separate company that provides a technology platform from which other companies can sell music over the Net. Real owns 40% of MusicNet, and it provides an even "brighter spot," according to Corcoran. The official launch of MusicNet, expected this fall, could be an additional catalyst for the stock to rise, says Rob Martin, an analyst with Friedman, Billings, Ramsey.
SLOW PICKUP. Real's biggest challenge now is to get revenues headed upward once again. From a peak of $67 million in the third quarter of 2000, revenues came in at $50.4 million in the first quarter, reported Apr. 17. Real gets most of its sales from companies that use its software to deliver streaming audio and video. Doug van Dorsten of Thomas Weisel predicts revenues will start slowly accelerating next quarter but still come in at $229 million for 2001, down from $242 million for all of 2000. "I'd really like to see a recovery in the software sector before we go to a strong buy on the stock," says Benyola, whose firm upgraded the stock to buy in May.
While the company is profitable on an operating basis -- the most recent quarter was its seventh consecutive one in the black -- earnings are slumping. Van Dorsten projects it will earn $0.09 a share this year, down from $0.18 last year. In 2002, he looks for $0.14 on revenues of $317 million.
Meantime, RealNetworks is still swimming in dangerous waters. Microsoft is making the delivery of high-quality audio and video a key feature of its Windows XP operating system, coming this fall. Martin believes Real will have to maintain a strong lead over Microsoft technically -- which some analysts think it has already lost -- in order to keep its customers.
POTENTIAL RIVAL? "People like an alternative to Microsoft, but at the end of the day you still have to have a better product," he says. According to Corcoran, there's still the risk that AOL and Microsoft will strike a deal down the road. "Will they come back to the table at some point in the future? Probably yes. Tomorrow? Probably not," he says.
Microsoft's Poole points out that by getting into the content-delivery business through GoldPass, Real is potentially competing with many of its customers, including AOL. "They've done well with that first 200,000 subscribers," he says. "You have to wonder which giants are going to wake up and start worrying about them."
For now, investors in Real can take heart that it has strong partners, a new source for recurring revenues in GoldPass, and is a key part of MusicNet. With its revenues and earnings slumping, those positives may not add up to a good reason to buy the stock. Unless, that is, you see value in pushing on one of the sharpest thorns in Microsoft's side.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stone is an associate editor of BusinessWeek Online and covers the markets in our daily Street Wise column.
Questions or comments? Join in the discussion at our Ask Amey Stone interactive forum
Edited by Douglas Harbrecht
Copyright 2000-2001, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
Q&A: EMI's Digital-Music Maven
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2001/tc20010621_567.htm
New media V-P Jay Samit says it's not clear yet exactly how music will be distributed in the furture -- but the possibilities are boundless
As senior vice-president in charge of new media at Big Five record label EMI Group (EMIPY ), Jay Samit thinks, sleeps, and breathes digital music. He has overseen dozens of deals with digital-music startups and is a key planner of EMI's digital strategy. On June 14, Samit spoke with BusinessWeek Online Technology Editor Alex Salkever on the future of music and technology. Following are edited excerpts from their conversation:
Q: A lot has happened in the last six months in online and digital music. Taking the long view, where do you see the industry going?
A: I think a number of things are important to look at here. A few years back, analysts were saying that people would never download music. Rampant piracy -- a billion songs a month are being downloaded by consumers -- blew away that myth. When you look at the proliferation of CD burners, consumers have the technical expertise and the desire to receive content in a new way. Whereas for our first 100 years as a company we sold a round thing with music on it, the next 100 years will offer a wide range of choices.
The real excitement here isn't so much the business model. What's more interesting is the way you can marry digital delivery to new consumer-electronic devices and experiences. So wireless is very exciting, set-top boxes to broadband cable are very exciting. And obviously, the PC desktop, from a North American perspective, is huge.
There are tremendous numbers of new ways to reach consumers, and we've partnered with dozens of different entrepreneurial organizations to try to explore these new ways. The hitch is, none of us knows exactly what the value proposition is that consumers are thirsting for. And so it's going to be a lot of trial and error, and some businesses and models will make it, and some won't.
Q: Where do you see music retailers and e-tailers fitting into the equation down the road?
A: They will have a huge role. At EMI, our goal was always to go to the aggregators, those that have already figured out how to build a relationship with consumers. But in this New Economy, the retailers and the e-tailers also have to rise to the occasion, in that they need to use this technology to differentiate themselves.
So there are many ways they can do it. Subscriptions could be the ultimate continuity program. Buy x amount of product this month at Best Buy, and you get your month's download-subscription service for free. There are many ways to drive people from online into the store and vice-versa. There's also just-in-time manufacturing of retail recordings. You put a broadband connection into the store and make the CD there. We've done this on several continents at this point. It means the smallest mom-and-pop shop can have the same inventory as an Amazon.
One of five consumers who walk into a record store do not buy the CD that they went in to buy. Imagine if we can suddenly capture those sales -- and grow the market by 20%.
The bigger issue, both for our artists and ourselves, is that more intelligent, one-to-one marketing will allow us to make more albums profitable. Today, less than 5% of all the albums are profitable. If we could change that to 15%, which seems very reasonable, you're talking about the same number of sales, but triple the EBITDA [earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization]. If you're also talking about having subscriptions and taking more music consumers and turning them into customers, then the upside is huge.
In 2000, Sound Scan logged 288,000 different CDs sold in the U.S. That's different [titles]. Eight-five percent sold less than a thousand copies. Now, is that saying that 85% of the music only appealed to a teeny, teeny fraction of people? No. [Right now,] the cost of finding out who likes something is too high. Under the current system, you have to market to everybody, and that's why most people are focusing on the top of the charts at retail. And a lot of artists don't make it there.
Now, imagine that a person downloads or makes a choice through an interactive radio or a subscription for music in the Arabic repertoire. They're in Cleveland, Ohio. I suddenly know an awful lot about them. Wouldn't they like to hear other releases from that artist or that genre?
We did a program that proved this last year with Pizza Hut. If you ordered a certain pizza to your home, you got a code, you went online, and you could pick six tracks and get a free CD. So we know each person's physical and e-mail address and what their tastes are. We were able to, with their permission, go back and suggest other artists and other releases. And this has been very, very successful.
Everybody loves to hear new music. So when we can introduce people to new artists, new music videos, and stuff that they have shown a predisposition for -- people love that. They don't consider that intrusive marketing. It's like a smart friend, who you hang with and who knows your taste, shows you a new album or new artist. That's where we get our picks. Now this can be done with a little bit more technology.
Most human beings are not CD buyers. Yet virtually all human beings are music consumers. You hear music on the radio, you hear it in the restaurant, you hear it when you're shopping. What if we can now turn more of those people on to being consumers, not just of CDs, but in buying other types of goods and services?
Q: Most people are not CD buyers, but they're music consumers, you say. Wouldn't that lead to the conclusion that we're going to get rid of the CD entirely?
A: That's the 1948 conversation that TV will be the death of movie theaters. And then cable will be the death of broadcast. And home video will be death of cable, and pay-per-view will be the death of video-cassettes. In fact, pay-per-view and home video took a $400 million movie industry and turned it into a $20 billion-plus multifaceted business.
Q: I was really surprised by the deal EMI signed with CD-burning software maker Roxio -- a company that inadvertently powers so much piracy.
A: Consumers have spoken loudly that they know how to use that technology and would like to use that technology. But there are many value propositions that we can offer with CD burning.
Imagine that you go into a retailer and buy a new single, you take it home, you put it in your computer, which has Roxio software, and it allows you to listen to the entire album, even though you just bought the single. If you then decide to buy it, you can unlock that content and burn your own copy. You don't need the high-speed connection, because the data is already encrypted on the disk. It's not just a piracy tool.
Most people are using CD burners, I believe, for legitimate purposes. They are not mass-producing music copies and selling them. The main goal of adding DRM [digital rights management –- ways to prevent piracy and rampant copying] and working with Roxio is to stop the pirate and the cottage-pirate industries, where one kid on a campus buys an album and sells [copies] to all his friends.
Q: What do you see as the biggest barriers right now to this all coming together?
A: One of the big challenges is that the Internet is borderless. The laws on how we license music are all tethered to geographical boundaries. Many artists are not signed globally to the same company. The Backstreet Boys are handled by different companies in different countries all over the world. So you suddenly do something on the Internet, which has no borders, and it's more complicated.
Because it's so early and the technology is moving so quickly, the concept of consistent standards or formats is elusive. MP3, which seems popular, is such an old compression standard. Today, there are many, many ways to have a smaller file that sounds infinitely better. For computer-electronics manufacturers, coming up with a standard takes time.
Q: What is the universe going to look like for the artists?
A: I think this has already proven to be great for the artists. We have 1,600 artists globally. Many of them have day jobs. Now, those artists can reach fans all over the place, and [we] have a way to stock [their] music, whereas in the past they never got the shelf space. That could mean big sales and new markets for them.
I'll give you an example. The expats of India have a GDP that exceeds the nation of India. Yet, for all those people that were born in India, that love the culture and the music -- name a shop in your town where they can buy the latest CD releases from the subcontinent. Now, no matter where you live, you can get content that you love. And that, to the artist, means incremental income.
In the same way, now the artists and the labels have the ability to help more things to take off. Just look at [the British band] Radiohead. They had two albums this year. Unusual for a band to do that. Neither have what you would call commercial, top-of the-pops singles on radio. Neither of the albums had music videos made. And neither had extensive touring. Yet the first one opened at No. 1 on the charts, and this week, their second album of the year opened at No. 2.
Why was that? Tremendously loyal fans that you're able to reach through the Internet and who are able to reach each other. That's huge. And guess what? That costs less.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2000-2001, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
Web Radio Pioneers Sing the Blues
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2001/tc20010621_046.htm
Listeners love them, but advertisers ignore them. And the business' harsh economics has traditional radio companies circling like vultures
For music lovers, life doesn't get much better than NetRadio.com. Every month, 2 million to 3 million listeners tune into the online radio station's 100 genre-based channels, which range from heavy metal to jazz to classical music. In February, NetRadio topped the online charts, chalking up more than 3 million hours of streamed music, according to the most recent figures from radio ratings firm Arbitron. That's the seventh consecutive month NetRadio (NETRC ) has owned the No. 1 slot.
Sounds like a Web success story, right? Well, not exactly. In the quarter ended Mar. 31, NetRadio.com's revenues fell 64%, to $202,000. Its stock is trading at about $0.34, which resulted in the company being delisted from the Nasdaq in May.
That's about par for the course in the struggling online radio sector. While it has wowed listeners by offering more choice and innovative programming than traditional radio, online radio has failed to catch on financially. Although 75.5 million people tuned into online radio stations last year, and 106 million are expected to tune in by 2003, according to estimates from digital entertainment consultancy Webnoize, such numbers don't make up for the lack of a clear business model.
"IT'S A PROBLEM." Unlike traditional radio stations, which use a blanket signal to cover an area, online radio stations send an individual stream to each listener, raising costs per user. From a cost standpoint, the more customers they have, the worse off they are. Also, the big music labels don't want to grant Internet stations special licenses to make the Net stations more interactive for fear of cannibalizing CD sales and the big labels' own coming music-subscription services.
On the revenue side, technology for targeted Internet audio ads hasn't emerged quickly enough to have a big impact on the bottom line. Perhaps most alarming to the upstarts is that big radio conglomerates stand poised to move their content wholesale onto the Web to compete ferociously for ad dollars. "It's a problem for a lot of people to stay in the game," says NetRadio's CFO Mike Wise.
The upshot? At best, online-only stations are likely to end up as cheap eats for traditional radio companies, which already have relationships with hundreds of thousands of advertisers and can use them for their technology platforms, audiences, and brands. At worst, they'll become another relic of the Internet Age.
COSTLY FANS. Online radio is suffering partly because it has to shoulder unique burdens. Each listener requires an individual audio stream, which means bandwidth costs rise for the online broadcaster with each new fan. NetRadio's Wise estimates that the bandwidth necessary to stream online transmission costs $0.05 to $0.10 per hour per listener.
Unlike in other broadcast businesses, these per-listener costs remain constant. Over time, those bandwidth costs will drop and possibly be offset if advertisers can be persuaded to pay a premium for finely targeted spots. But that will benefit only large players with a strong balance sheet to give them staying power. Upstarts such as NetRadio don't fit that profile.
Licensing musical content has also turned into a headache for the online stations. Many of them let listeners personalize their music stream by giving high marks to songs they like and skipping songs they don't. That's too close to delivering music-on-demand, argues the Recording Industry Association of America, which filed suit against three prominent online radio stations and streaming sites in late May and early June.
The RIAA wants the stations to buy special interactive licenses from the labels. The stations counter that the innovations they're offering are legal. Still, the suit casts a pall over the stations' future prospects.
INSUFFICIENT TOOLS. So does the failure of advertisers to recognize online radio's potential. They remain leery of newfangled ad-streaming technology, which inserts targeted ads into online broadcasts. And the absence of standard ad-efficiency measurements leaves media buyers without the tools to justify online ad campaigns.
Most daunting is the fact that 75% to 80% of traditional radio's advertising revenues come from local businesses, which don't benefit from the scattershot exposure Internet broadcasting offers. "The bottom line is there's no easy way to tap into those mom-and-pop advertising dollars," says Dannielle Romano, a music analyst with Jupiter Media Metrix, which recently surveyed media buyers about the potential of online radio.
The emphasis on local ads will hurt the online-only stations more as the big companies figure out ways to pair targeted Internet ads with traditional radio ads, a capability the upstarts don't have because they lack strong relationships with advertisers in the first place. For example, the country's largest radio-station owner, Clear Channel, booked about $3.5 billion in ad revenues in 2000 and enjoys huge influence with media buyers. Jupiter Media Metrix predicts that by 2005, $1.4 billion of the $30 billion spent on radio advertising will go toward Internet radio spots. The big guys will take the lion's share.
"We already have almost 1,200 stations, each of which has relationships with advertisers and consumers," says Kevin Mayer, CEO of Clear Channel's Internet division. "We can leverage those relationships. It's much harder for a new Internet player to do that."
COMMERCIAL PROTESTS. And by simply simulcasting current programming over the Internet, traditional broadcasters should avoid the offensive that the record labels have mounted against the online-only stations aimed at restricting interactive functions such as customer playlists, pause buttons, and sampling.
Even so, traditional players haven't escaped all the battles. On Apr. 11, the American Federation of Television & Radio Artists filed with the U.S. Copyright Office to require stations to pay a higher talent fee if ads are played over the Internet. The AFTRA contract permits radio ads to be played only over the air. Rather than pay higher fees or create Internet-only ads, most radio stations -- including Clear Channel's -- responded by simply cutting off their simulcast Web streams in April.
It wasn't until June 18 that Clear Channel announced it would resume broadcasting some of its stations' content on the Internet by using ad-insertion technology from privately held company Hiwire. The National Association of Broadcasters is negotiating an agreement with AFTRA to get other stations back on the air.
NO POINT? Ultimately, the AFTRA dispute is just a bump in the road as the radio giants drive toward online dominance. And the beauty of the situation for them is all they have to do is sit back and wait. The rise of music-subscription services such as MusicNet and PressPlay, formerly called Duet, which are due out later this year, will undermine much of the value the Net radio stations offer.
"With a music subscription, users will be able to tailor music to their taste, so there won't be any point in trying to get some of what you want through a radio station," says Jupiter's Romano. In fact, analysts predict that as traditional players take control of Internet programming, it will become increasingly like what we hear anywhere on the FM dial during rush hour.
That would be the ultimate proof that, just like Napster and Salon, Net radio is a concept that remains exceedingly difficult for upstarts to make profitable.
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By Jane Black in New York
Edited by Alex Salkever
Facing the Digital Music at Record Shops
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2001/tc20010621_232.htm
Are they endangered? Not yet. Still, Web downloads and online CD sales are making life ever-tougher for traditional music retailers
In the red glow of fluorescent lights, pop divas smile and rap artists flash V-for-victory signs from glossy wall posters. They watch over shelves full of tapes and CDs and over listening stations that offer samples of the hottest tunes. Pierced-nose punkers and corn-rowed hip-hoppers all come here, to their favorite music store, to get their fix. It's a vibrant setting -- and an endangered one.
The arrival of easy and widespread digital downloads paired with cheap CD burners and online CD sales could put significant pressure on brick-and-mortar music shops, just as downloads and online sales have started to kill software stores. (Remember Egghead Software? It went from 205 stores at its peak to a Web-only operation in 1998 -- and it continues to struggle.) Music fans are already flocking to the Web to find their music: In the first quarter of 2001, some 22 million people downloaded tunes, according to consumer research firm Cyber Dialogue.
As that habit grows, more music sales will occur online. According to consultancy Jupiter Media Metrix, online sales of CDs and downloads will account for 25%, or $5.4 billion, of all U.S. music sales by 2005, up from an already healthy 18% this year. Amazon (AMZN ) has vaulted into the top ranks of CD sellers after only three years in the business. "It's a signal to CD music retailers to abandon their stores and go online," says Phil Leigh, an analyst at brokerage Raymond James, who gives most offline music stores 10 years of life at best.
SHRINKING SINGLES. That's a radical view not all analysts share. But most agree that only the fittest stores will survive the next few years, with weaker music retailers closing shop or broadening into other products. Even today's biggest brick-and-mortar music retailers, including Tower Records, Virgin, and HMV, will have to use a grab bag of tricks to fend off the Web and keep customers coming back.
To some extent, retailers have only themselves to blame for the spot they're in. According to Jay Samit, senior vice-president for new media at Big Five record label EMI Group, one out of five customers can't find the CD they're looking for when they go to a store. Moreover, sales of CD singles plummeted 38% last year, helping to cut the value of music sold in the U.S. from $14.6 billion in 1999 to $14.3 billion in 2000, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. Industry tracker SoundScan counted 175 million albums purchased in the first quarter of 2001 in the U.S., vs. 177 million in the same period the year before.
Worse than a stagnant market, in the view of retailers, is that offline brand loyalty doesn't necessarily transfer online, says Idil Cakim, director of media and entertainment strategies for New York-based Cyber Dialogue. "If you're selling CDs and Amazon.com is selling CDs and you don't offer any differentiation, then you are too late," she says.
A NEW MIX? That's why many analysts say retailers have to change their tune dramatically. Music stores should become broader entertainment venues that include video games and movies, as well as tickets to sold-out or yet-unavailable-for-sale concerts, says Cakim. That's precisely the strategy of multimedia retailer Hastings Entertainment (HAST ), based in Amarillo, Tex.: When consumers come to Hastings' stores, they "can get a bag of popcorn, rent a movie, buy a CD, and say hello to a friend," says Storm Gloor, Hastings' director of music.
Other shops are shifting their merchandise mix to more value-added and profitable items, such as DVDs of concerts and movies. "Nonmusic [sales] as a percentage of our total [revenues] has increased 15% over last year, says Tom Thirkell, CEO of Atlanta-based Value Music Concepts, which operates 50 stores in 24 states and grossed $48 million last year.
Digital kiosks are another gimmick stores are using to better connect with customers. Barnes & Noble (BKS ) has installed Internet-enabled kiosks in its stores through which customers can order books and music. DigKiosk, by San Diego-based DigMedia, allows consumers a chance to listen to samples of music in MP3 and CD formats. Online-music startup Liquid Audio has built kiosks in London that for a while offered HMV customers the ability to burn a personalized CD selected from 120,000 tracks of independent music. Liquid Audio has exited that business, banking its future on offering subscription-based music services online. Nonetheless, services such as these "could give any mom-and-pop music store access to the entire music catalog without needing the stocking space," says EMI's Samit.
MUSIC LOCKERS. Retailers will have to augment stronger in-store efforts with a sound Web strategy, experts believe. With digital music "raising the bar for the savviest competitors out there, "distributors and retailers are increasingly striking deals with companies that hawk innovative technology," says Jim Donio, executive vice-president of the National Association of Recording Merchandisers (NARM), which represents nearly 1,000 U.S. retailers, wholesalers, and distributors of recorded music.
Already, many retailers are experimenting with technologies that are designed to create a seamless combination of the online and offline music worlds. These include so-called music lockers -- secure online storage -- where consumers can put songs from CDs they purchase and create customized play lists.
Free samples are another way of cementing the online-offline connection. Barnes&Noble.com offers free digital downloads of select music by bands such as the Goo Goo Dolls, Depeche Mode, and R.E.M. And some retailers are combining a physical purchase with a digital-music file on a desktop. Tower Records is planning to allow online CD buyers access to MP3 versions of their purchases before the hard copy arrives in the mail.
WALK-IN BUYERS. For all the digital noise, some retailers remain skeptical that there'll be a wholesale shift to downloads and online sales. A large portion of CD sales come from big stores such as Wal-Mart and BestBuy that will still attract walk-in customers. And some retailers say the tangibles remain essential. "People still like to touch their CDs," says Eisenman. Retailers have a knack for knowing what the consumers want, picking the best CDs, and delivering customer service, he says. "Brick-and-mortar is here, and it's not going anywhere," he adds.
Indeed, many big industry players think reports of the retail stores' demise are greatly exaggerated. "That's the 1948 conversation about radio and television, or a conversation about VCRs and movies," says EMI's Samit. "In fact, we took a $400 million film industry and turned it into a $20 billion-plus business."
Even so, the Internet "has got to be taking market share" from traditional retailers, says Bill Armstrong, an analyst with research and investment firm C.L. King & Associates. Music downloading "is beyond the tipping point, it's almost an epidemic," adds Cyber Dialogue's Cakim. So unless music retailers take action, get online, and shift their product mixes, the next melody some of them are likely to hear will be a requiem.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Olga Kharif in New York
Digital Music's New Battle Hymn
6/21/01 (Kudos to DABOSS for this link)
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2001/tc20010621_702.htm
It's no longer a fight among upstarts looking to start a revolution. Now, sensing that money can be made, industry giants are slugging it out
Over the past 10 weeks or so, Microsoft (MSFT ) and America Online (AOL ) have engaged in intense, multifaceted negotiations. They've labored to reach a deal covering everything from what the default Web browser will be for AOL's proprietary online service (currently, it's Microsoft's Explorer) to creating connectivity between the competing MSN and AOL instant-messaging systems.
But during the weekend of June 17, the negotiations took an acrimonious turn over a surprising sticking point -- digital music. The issue, AOL spokespeople claimed, was a Microsoft demand that the company remove competitor RealNetworks' (RNWK ) media-player from AOL's ubiquitous client software (see "A Real Threat to Microsoft?").
That confrontation underscores the new realities of digital music -- tunes that are distributed via the Net instead of on a store-bought CD. Upstarts such as Napster and MP3.com (MPPP ) may have forced the pace of technological change and brought the idea to public awareness, but suddenly, the fight over the future of music on the Net -- and perhaps of the music industry itself -- has shifted to the industry's giants. "The muscle is lining up," says Doug Camplejohn, CEO of digital-music-subscription company MyPlay. In fact, Camplejohn sold out to publishing and music powerhouse Bertelsmann in May for just shy of $30 million.
INEFFICIENT. The draw of digital tunes is seemingly irresistible. Although consumers spend $38.5 billion a year on music worldwide, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, it remains an inefficient business, where the vast majority of products never make money. By taking advantage of the Internet and new digital formats, record labels and technology companies alike think they can improve margins and broaden their markets in much the same way that pay-per-view and video rentals significantly expanded the movie business (see "Q&A: EMI's Digital Music Maven").
With that prize in mind, over the past year the five largest record labels have either browbeat or bought out challengers that tried to woo paying customers away from free music on the Net. With the help of their trade organization, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the Big Five music labels have sued a host of Internet radio and streaming-music sites in an increasingly aggressive display of legal bravado. The RIAA has also won legal rulings that reduced the once-mighty Napster to near insignificance by forcing the company to screen copyrighted songs from its free file-trading system.
In April and May, meanwhile, the kings of the music establishment announced their own music-subscription businesses, to be launched sometime in the coming year. PressPlay (formerly called Duet) is backed by Sony (SNE ) and Vivendi Universal (V ), while MusicNet is backed by AOL Time Warner, EMI (EMIPY ), Bertelsmann, and RealNetworks, which will also provide the technology platform. MusicNet will likely be built around a streaming-music model, but PressPlay hasn't yet revealed its plans.
CAPITULATION. Both groups say they'll license their system and content to third parties, a clear reaction to veiled threats of antitrust action from the U.S. Senate. However, exactly what subscribers will get from either system remains unclear -- including the details on which titles will be available for download or streaming access.
Napster itself has already signed up as a MusicNet customer, a further capitulation after it agreed last November to accept $50 million in financing from Bertelsmann in return for warrants allowing the media giant to buy a chunk of the file-trading company.
Microsoft, which has created an increasingly popular media player and a proprietary music-file format, clearly intends to crash the party. Redmond has said it hopes to offer a music-subscription service to its MSN customers, but it's likely to have trouble coming to terms with the big labels. "Microsoft is too big. It is a potential competitor of even the record labels. So there may be some resistance [from the Big Five] to adopting Microsoft's technologies," explains Matt Bailey, a senior analyst at digital entertainment consultancy Webnoize.
SCRAMBLED SIGNAL. While the jockeying by the various contenders has yet to play out, the future of digital music is coming into much clearer focus. For instance, negotiations between the warring parties are inching toward a resolution of intellectual-property and royalty conflicts involving Internet radio. Those talks cover a wide range of services, ranging from simulcasts of regular radio programs via the Internet to Net-only stations that focus on a specific genre to highly interactive programs of streamed music where listeners can sample and select songs and even set up personal playlists.
Thus far, Internet radio has failed to make money for anyone (see "Web Radio Pioneers Sing the Blues"). But most analysts believe that the lure of fine-tuned programming should prove strong over time. And advertisers could well take a liking to the medium's ability to precisely target audiences on a geographical or demographic basis. Other recent deals point toward a broadening of the industry's retail model -- away from one built around CDs and toward selling a wider array of goods and services.
Take the agreement that Andrew Rasiej's Digital Club Network and Sony Music Group penned on May 31 to beam concerts by Sony artists from 60 clubs around the country. Rasiej believes this is a sign that Sony is starting to embrace the new medium's marketing possibilities -- and that Webcast productions could enhance the value of music-subscription services. "Live concerts have always been promotional tools, and now they can be used more easily," he says.
BURN YOUR OWN. Music retailers are also adopting new strategies to take advantage of digital products (see "Facing the Digital Music at Record Stores"). Many are shifting the emphasis in their product lines away from CDs and toward more expensive audio and movie DVDs. The DVD format offers superior fidelity and longer playing times, which is spurring sales of concert videos, says Tom Thirkell, chief financial officer of Value Music Concepts, a Marietta (Ga.) chain with stores in 24 states and annual sales of $48 million. Thirkell's company, like other music retailers, has launched an online sales offensive that allows him to compete with the retail giants.
To make CDs more appealing, the labels are experimenting with ways of letting customers burn them their own. On June 5, Roxio announced that it had struck a deal with Big Five label EMI to create tools consumers can use to make their own disks. Roxio makes the top CD-burning software and is a favorite of music pirates (though the company contends the pirates represent a minority portion of its business).
EMI is clearly motivated by overwhelming customer interest. Roxio CEO Chris Gorog claims that 100 million consumers will have a CD burner by yearend. Many of them are using the technology to create their own musical mixes by burning MP3 files from their PCs onto CDs. This type of mix-and-match capability is something that labels have provided in only limited measure until now. "Consumers have spoken loudly that they know how to use that technology and would like to use it," says Jay Samit, senior vice-president for new media at EMI, who adds: "There are many value propositions that we can offer with CD burning."
REPULSIVE RESTRICTIONS. Music fans shouldn't mistake all these moves for an unambiguous embrace of all-you-can-eat music-subscription services, allowing free run of label catalogs. MusicNet has indicated that it will use copyright-protection software to prevent subscribers from burning CDs of tunes that are streamed over the service. In fact, many analysts expect the first round of new services to be so restrictive as to repulse many consumers. The labels themselves freely concede that they have no idea what consumers will pay for -- and how much they will pay. (What about you? Take our digital music poll, and let us know.)
Furthermore, a battle looms over standards for digital-music formats. The older MP3 format has dominated the consumer market until now, largely because of Napster and other free trading systems. That could change with Napster's decline, as it becomes harder for average Web surfers to find the MP3s they want. Both RealNetworks and Microsoft are offering technologically superior file formats and streaming-media systems with strong antipiracy measures and much better playback quality. As the ultimate victory of VHS over the higher-quality Beta videocassette illustrates, the more popular standard is most likely to win -- but which one will it be?
The record labels surely haven't embraced the MP3 format, and they'll likely exclude it from their new subscription services. That could contribute to confusion over which standard works best and under what conditions. And that could poison the consumer's experience.
"WRONG LESSON." "Do we really expect the sales guy in the store to understand that the portable player he's selling only handles a Windows digital-rights management system with a handful of subscription services?" asks Sean Ryan, the CEO of streaming-music company Listen.com. "People are thinking the trend [toward all-you-can-eat subscription services] is going to happen faster than it is going to. They have learned the wrong lesson from Napster." Fans of second-tier musicians may be particularly frustrated if, as some analysts expect, smaller Web sites devoted to independent bands disappear as more and more traffic migrates to established musical entities.
Accordingly, Ryan and others think it could be a few years before middle-level musicians figure out how to use the Web as their primary sales channel, outside the galaxy of the big labels. Likewise, the big labels, Microsoft, RealNetworks, and others may need up to five years to develop viable models for online distribution.
That's no surprise. Big shifts in media distribution usually take a few years to develop. But with fears receding that the music business music will be devoured by the Internet, it appears that many of the players with the power to make this transition happen are finally willing to sing along.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Alex Salkever in New York
Copyright 2000-2001, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
Buckster visits EDIG:
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=701876
DABOSS..In appreciation of your unrelenting cheerleading, DD and plain hard work on behalf of EDIG over a longer period than I can remember, I am addressing to you what I felt was the most meaningful thing to come out of the 1 hour 15 minutes I spent meeting with Robert yesterday.
I asked him "How is our relationship with DataPlay progressing and is this where EDIG's significant near term revenue potential lies". Roberts response as I best recall it was "While I can't comment specifically about what we are doing with DataPlay, I will say that EDIG is the primary integrator of DataPlay technology into handheld devices." Primary integrator..I liked the sound of that. One other item of significance is that they have no immediate plans to fill Rinard's position..being an old beancounter myself, not sure I agree with that. I would like to think theat if the company is in the process of seriously ramping up revenues, then they would need more, not less, help in the accounting, financial management and reporting areas..not sure this isn't being penny foolish. Again, thanks for all you've done for this board..don't stop now.
Danl, here's a little more:
http://www.w3.org/Voice/
ZapMedia ZapStation/Harman Kardon DMC 100
Java-based ``Digital Media Center'' plays DVDs, MP3s and more, and it's running Linux.
by Don Marti
http://embedded.linuxjournal.com/magazine/issue02/4526/?sid=067a22eb321e8535cc2188fc335fe048
Windows Media in an embedded Linux box? Yes, and DVD too. ZapMedia has packaged an extraordinarily (for an embedded system) ordinary PC, with an Intel Celeron CPU, 128MB of RAM, Ethernet, modem and a 30GB hard drive, as a home theater component. The first licensee for the ZapStation platform is Harman Kardon who exhibited their ZapMedia box, the DMC 100 Digital Media Center, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January.
The DMC 100 offers the user a complete shopping list of current entertainment technology, including a DVD player, CD player with the ability to rip tracks to MP3 or Windows Media Audio on the hard drive, web browser, internet radio and player for MPEG video clips. On the TV side, it doesn't yet have TiVo-like TV-management functionality (though it could be added in software), but where shiny discs are concerned, it'll play just about anything you feed it: audio CDs, MP3 CDs, DVDs and Video CDs.
Michael Hirsch, senior software developer for ZapMedia, explained the choice of Linux on Intel as an integrated decision; they didn't choose OS and hardware separately or let the choice of one affect the choice of the other. ``Cost was certainly a factor--we are a startup, after all--but not the major factor,'' he said.
More important were issues such as stability, multitasking, scriptability and support. Linux is known for its reliability and that's very important in a consumer electronics device. We make lots of use of pipes, background processes, Java, Perl, Python, etc., in our code. We felt that all this was easiest to do with Linux.
Of course, ease of development is not to be sneezed at. The Linux programming model is extremely programmer-friendly. We find that we can implement new codecs in Linux as fast or faster than we can in other operating systems. And I probably don't have to tell you how nice it is to be able to look at, and change the source of, the OS if needed. Usually a simple e-mail to the code's author suffices, however.
The most CPU-intensive application for the ZapStation is encoding audio as MP3 or Windows Media format, and ZapMedia decided that performance on an embedded-class CPU would be unacceptably slow. So they went with the Celeron and Linux.
So how do you get Windows Media and DVD CCA-licensed DVD software on a Linux box? Simple--be an embedded systems vendor. Microsoft claims not to have seen any demand for Windows Media on desktop Linux boxes, but the Windows Media group at Microsoft is only too happy to strike a deal with the embedded Linux market. They package their library for Linux as a self-extracting .EXE file with documentation in Windows Help format, but it works.
And, Hirsch adds that Microsoft's support has been excellent, with the Windows Media group interested in getting their product ``into the living room, as opposed to the computer room''. The sound is good, so far, ``a little richer and fuller, in general'', than MP3.
The DVD-playing software is InterVideo's LinDVD, which is not vaporware, but embedded-vendor-only evaluation-ware (they bill their product as ``First legal Linux software DVD player'', which rankles those of us who know that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is unconstitutional and that the free software players are just as legal as the proprietary ones, but I digress).
No RealPlayer, though. The vendor was too hard to deal with and wanted too much for licenses, while Microsoft had somebody on the next plane with a contract and a pen. (Memo to Real Networks staff: update your résumés. Real is the kind of proprietary-software innovators gone arrogant that Microsoft eats for breakfast.)
On the hardware side, a key place where the ZapStation is more demanding than an ordinary PC is in audio. Most PC sound chipsets don't sound good enough to drive a home stereo. ``Harman Kardon has helped us a lot in this area,'' Hirsch said. ``They are a hardware partner and have a great deal of expertise in audio quality. They helped us find some really nice chips that have 0.005% THD (Total Hardware Distribution). If you have a nice stereo and speakers, you'll really be able to hear the difference when you play a CD or DVD.''
ZapMedia has been using prerelease 2.4 kernels for months, and the kernel on the ZapStation includes the OSS sound drivers and ReiserFS. No problems with the kernel at all, and ReiserFS has worked out very well, filling the simple but necessary role of making sure that customers don't have to wait for their CD player to fsck. The other advantages of ReiserFS, which mostly have to do with better performance in directories with many small files, don't matter here. ZapMedia also found the 2.4 kernel to be more responsive for playing audio and video than earlier kernels.
The generous hardware means that there's plenty of space for memory hogs to wallow, so the box runs X with a user-interface in Java, running on the IBM Java VM. Everything except very performance-sensitive code such as encoding and decoding is done in Java. ZapMedia estimates that using Java for development has enabled them to get the work done in a third of the time that it would have taken using C++ because Java makes it easier to catch ``dumb bugs'' like trying to write over the end of an array.
The company has also developed a Java-based, in-house user interface design toolset, in which designers can work with graphics of the on-screen ``control panel'' and assign functions to controls. Working from an image file of an entire screen, the designer uses a ``skinbuilder'' tool to designate areas of the screen as controls and assign functions to them. The skinbuilder exports a theme file that can be loaded onto the box, so the graphics department can re-theme the ZapStation without touching a line of Java.
Because most of the software is in Java, the development environment inside ZapMedia is cross-platform with about half of the developers on Microsoft platforms and the rest running Linux. One was even running a Macintosh for a while. ``In general,'' Hirsch points out, ``Java debuggers on Linux are terrible. We have to jump through hoops to use them, and even then they often don't work. So we use lots of debugging prints.''
ZapMedia can do software upgrades over the Internet, and the ZapStation uses the Net for lots of other purposes too. There's a built-in web browser, software to get cover images and track names for the CD player, browser-based access to ZapMedia's on-line store, which is designed for easy navigation with the remote control as pointing device, and software to play Shoutcast and Windows Media ``Internet radio'' stations. VCR users will be happy to learn that the ZapStation sets its own time automatically over the Internet.
Not that this information matters to any of our readers, but all the software in the DMC 100 is on the hard drive, and the case appears to open with four Phillips screws.
RealNetworks Unveils RealSystem Media Commerce Suite
Groundbreaking Secure Media Delivery and Commerce Platform Launches With Support From Leading Media Companies
Media Commerce Suite Enables Secure Distribution of Movies, Music and Other Digital Content to More Than 200 Million RealPlayer Users Worldwide
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/010620/sfw067.html
SEATTLE, June 20 /PRNewswire/ -- RealNetworks®, Inc. (Nasdaq: RNWK - news), the global leader in Internet media delivery, today launched the RealSystem® Media Commerce Suite, a platform offering the most complete and flexible commerce solution available for the secure licensing and delivery of digital media. The RealSystem Media Commerce Suite includes products and services for secure media packaging, license generation and high-quality content delivery to a trusted media player base across all major platforms. It empowers rights holders to create a range of robust business models for distributing rich media to the broadest worldwide audience, and will create many new ways for consumers to access and enjoy digital media.
Built on RealSystem iQ, the RealSystem Media Commerce Suite enables rights holders to distribute movies, music and other digital content to over 200 million RealPlayer® users. Over 15 million copies of RealPlayer enabled with the Media Commerce Suite functionality have already been installed since March of 2001. The Media Commerce Suite extends the RealSystem and RealPlayer open architecture to accommodate the incorporation of a wide range of rights management systems. It easily integrates into all types of existing infrastructures and back-end systems, supporting a broad set of business models including purchase, rental, video on-demand, and subscription services.
``The launch of the RealSystem Media Commerce Suite will ignite the market for commercial media distribution,'' said Rob Glaser, chairman and CEO, RealNetworks, Inc. ``By combining an extremely comprehensive, renewable security system and deep integration with our installed based of 200 million registered users, the Media Commerce Suite offers a true breakthrough in both security and ease of use. We believe the RealSystem Media Commerce Suite will generate huge benefits for rights holders, artists and consumers alike.''
The RealSystem Media Commerce Suite launches with support from an array of major media companies and rights holders. The RealSystem Media Commerce Suite will provide the security for MusicNet, the online music subscription service from AOL Time Warner, Bertelsmann, EMI and RealNetworks scheduled for release later this year.
``It's vitally important today that we have secure and reliable solutions for licensing and delivering digital media,'' said Andreas Schmidt, president and chief executive office of Bertelsmann eCommerce Group. ``With the Media Commerce Suite, RealNetworks is providing a rights management solution that will help companies meet consumers' growing desire for digital media.''
``The protection of EMI's music content demands a trusted and secure delivery solution that is as flexible as it is reliable,'' said Jay Samit, Senior Vice President of EMI Recorded Music. ``RealNetworks' new Media Commerce Suite will ensure that MusicNet offers the security EMI artists need, while letting fans enjoy their favorite music in whole new ways.''
``RealNetworks delivers a solution with clear insight to the business models of the rights holder,'' said Yair Landau, President of Sony Pictures Digital Entertainment. ``We believe this gives us many opportunities to safely deliver our content.''
Through its planned support of the XMCL specification (information below), the RealSystem Media Commerce Suite is the first secure delivery platform capable of letting rights holders utilize multiple back-end systems, rights security and rights management solutions while still protecting their content. The RealSystem Media Commerce Suite can be deployed by media companies, consumer retail fronts and clearing houses within their existing business management infrastructures. The architecture is open to enable the integration of other advanced digital rights management solutions, such as InterTrust Technologies' flexible rights management tools, and any other appropriate technologies. It supports and encourages the existence of multiple interoperable systems, allowing rights holders to reduce deployment costs and explore new business models with the confidence that their content is completely secure. These new tools will give consumers and rights holders the freedom to buy and sell digital media with a level of flexibility and security never before possible.
The RealSystem Media Commerce Suite, which is available today from RealNetworks, is comprised of four products and an array of security services including:
-- RealSystem Packager -- The RealSystem Packager is a utility that
prepares encoded content for streaming and download distribution
through the RealSystem iQ delivery platform. It employs strong
cryptographic algorithms to ensure the integrity of content is
maintained at all stages of content distribution and consumption.
-- RealSystem License Server -- The RealSystem License Server
authenticates and secures licenses for the secured content. It revokes
licenses and components as necessary, and provides backup and
restoration in the event of an accidental loss of license. The
RealSystem License Server supports all media and provides flexible
access rights (time-limited, duration-limited, times of play, or any
combination). It also supports integration with other DRM systems for
the implementation of a complete set of business models, including
subscription, video-on-demand, rental, ownership, promotion, and even
business-to-business rights such as multilevel distribution and content
syndication. The server is OS-independent and will support HP-UX, IBM
AIX, Linux, Sun Solaris, and Windows NT/2000.
-- RealSystem Trusted Delivery Plug-in -- This provides rights holders
with the ability to deliver RealSystem Packager processed content in a
seamless way via streaming or download. It fully leverages RealSystem
iQ's highly intelligent media delivery platform to deliver content from
all platforms to all devices.
-- Media Commerce Upgrade for RealPlayer -- This free upgrade extends
existing RealPlayers to allow for the online and offline playback of
secure content. It securely stores and enforces rights while
maintaining the high quality consumer experience. The tamper-resistant
client has a small footprint and is an easy upgrade for consumers to
access via the RealNetworks' "AutoUpdate" service.
RealNetworks today also announced an industry-wide effort to establish a common language of digital media business rules that will give content owners and rights holders the standardized media commerce infrastructure they need to fully monetize their media assets. By using this common language, known as the eXtensible Media Commerce Language (XMCL), rights holders will be able to bring to the Internet existing media business models, such as rental, subscription and purchase, and take advantage of new commerce opportunities enabled by digital media. XMCL also provides rights holders the freedom to use multiple back-end systems that interoperate with rights management solutions under a common interchange language. More information about XMCL will be available soon at http://www.xmcl.org .
About RealSystem iQ
RealSystem iQ is a robust end-to-end, standards-based, OS-independent, network media delivery system providing the common architecture for the global delivery of digital media over the Internet -- from any platform, to any device, in multiple media formats, from narrowband audio to high fidelity broadband video. RealSystem iQ is designed to efficiently broadcast, transport and deliver the breakthrough quality of RealAudio® and RealVideo® as well as media formats including: MP3, Apple QuickTime, Flash and over 45 other media formats via RealSystem's extensible architecture. RealSystem iQ operates at multiple levels to reliably deliver both live and on-demand media and eliminate congestion in the ``middle of the network.'' Through distributed network configurations of interconnected RealSystem Servers, RealSystem iQ empowers all servers to broadcast into the network, receive content from other servers, and deliver media to vast audiences, including over 200 million unique registered RealPlayer users. RealSystem iQ also provides a highly extensible architecture enabling delivery to next-generation media playback devices including wireless mobile devices, game consoles, and broadband ready set-top boxes.
About RealNetworks
RealNetworks, Inc is the global leader in Internet media delivery. It develops and markets software products and services designed to enable users of personal computers and other consumer electronic devices to send and receive audio, video and other multimedia services using the Web. Consumers can access and experience audio/video programming and download RealNetworks' consumer software on the Internet at http://www.real.com . RealNetworks' systems and corporate information is located on the Internet at http://www.realnetworks.com .
NOTE: RealNetworks, RealAudio, RealVideo, RealSystem and RealPlayer are registered trademarks of RealNetworks, Inc.
SOURCE: RealNetworks, Inc.
Sundry Lanier DD from murrayhill and DABOSS:
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=701121
I am saying that the current contract
expires in December. That is commonly available information. I am saying that Bernie McGoon, a Lanier Vice President currently located in Southern California, and another Lanier representative told me that they intend to replace the Cquence Mobile with a PDA. I have no idea whether they intend to utilize our technology in their new device. I never brought up EDIG at this meeting.
What I am trying to say should be quite apparent from the original report. They are currently selling it, and they have no plans to update the Cquence Mobile.
As to WHY I am saying it, to answer danL's query, that also should be obvious; because I believe in reporting the objective facts as I have gathered them first hand from both Lanier as well as reps from several of their competetors at this conference.
Lanier e-mail to DABOSS:
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=701281
Subj: RE: (no subject)
Date: 6/20/01 5:46:23 AM Pacific Daylight Time
From: MFulton@lanierhealthcare.com (Fulton, Merideth)
To: XXXX
We will continue to offer Cquence Mobile. Yes, we are exploring
partnerships in the PDA arena and in many other software-based applications.
Yes we have a relationship with e.Digital.
Thank you for your interest in Lanier Healthcare.
-----Original Message-----
From: XXXX
Sent: Wednesday, June 20, 2001 12:39 AM
To: mfulton@lanierhealthcare.com
Subject: (no subject)
Hi,
I am hearing that Lanier is planning a move away from the Cquence Mobile
product line in lieu of a PDA type device. Is there any truth in that ?
Also, do you plan on continuing your relationship with e.Digital, the
company
that presently designed and developed the Cquence Mobile ?
Thanks,
XXXX
AOL, Microsoft Prepare For Net Battle
By Byron Acohido and Paul Davidson, USA TODAY
REDMOND, WASHINGTON, U.S.A., 19 Jun 2001, 11:48 AM CST
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/167004.html
With neither Microsoft nor AOL Time Warner willing to take a subordinate role in the drive to dominate the Internet, a clash of titans seems assured.
The No. 1 software maker plans to continue to extend its control of the personal computer to Internet services. Meanwhile, AOL Time Warner, the world's biggest media company, is sure to counter with innovative ways to deliver its huge cache of music, magazines and movies to Internet users.
AOL says talks broke down Saturday when it wouldn't agree to boot RealNetworks' media player from its service that would have been bundled with Microsoft's Windows XP, the operating system to be released this fall. Microsoft disputes that account.
In any case, the stage is set for open warfare on two key fronts: streaming media and instant messaging.
"It's about time," says Seamus McAteer of Jupiter Media Metrix. "You can't have two giant companies colluding. The consumer wants choice. Let the games begin."
AOL's refusal to drop RealNetworks' player sets up a tussle between Microsoft and the RealNetworks-AOL alliance in the market for online music.
"I expect the (battle) to continue for a number of years," says Mark Mooradian of Jupiter Media Metrix. "If AOL had shut out RealNetworks, that would have been the death knell for Real."
For now, RealNetworks has the upper hand. Its player is used for most Web audio and video streaming, though Microsoft's Windows Media Player has been gaining ground. Real is also bundled with AOL's service, giving it access to 29 million subscribers. And RealNetworks has teamed with three of the five major record labels to develop a licensed music-subscription service, called MusicNet, by early fall. Thus, at least initially, music from those firms will be available on AOL and RealPlayer but not on Windows Media Player.
Meanwhile, Microsoft has its own weapons. Its media player will be included with every copy of XP, potentially giving it wider reach. The failure of the talks will likely "increase Microsoft's vigor" to do a deal with Pressplay, a rival service led by music giants Universal and Sony, says Gartner analyst P.J. McNealy.
But some analysts expect MusicNet and Pressplay to cross-license each other's music. That would mean all music eventually could be played on RealPlayer or Windows Media Player. But such cross-licensing has raised antitrust concerns with European regulators. If Microsoft stays independent, it might be best positioned to do deals with all five major music firms, McNealy says.
Microsoft also covets access to AOL's large and loyal instant-messaging audience. MSN Messenger will be embedded in XP, enabling people to send rapid-fire messages and participate in audio and video conferencing. But Microsoft also wants MSN Messenger users to be able to talk to AOL's 25.5 million instant-messaging users in the USA. MSN Messenger has 18.3 million users, Jupiter Media Metrix says.
AOL cites privacy, security and reliability as reasons not to tie its messaging service into Microsoft's.
But experts say the real issue is Microsoft's barely disguised intent to use instant messaging to eventually lure AOL users to Microsoft's Internet services, such as identity authentication, online calendars and credit-card transactions.
"AOL needs to thwart Microsoft and keep Microsoft out of the pockets of its consumers," says Vern Keenan, industry analyst at Keenan Vision.
AOL is unlikely to suffer the same fate as companies steamrolled by Microsoft on its way to dominance of PCs.
AOL Time Warner on paper has the ability to amass 130 million magazine, cable TV and Internet subscribers. And it has yet to roll out its big gun — a multimedia mass-marketing campaign hawking Time Warner content on AOL.
"AOL is increasingly looking for ways to turn its vast trove of content into a revenue stream, and Microsoft owns the infrastructure and mechanisms to make money off that structure," says Dwight Davis at Summit Strategies.
Reported by USA Today, http://www.usatoday.com
PC World: Imation to Ship DataPlay's Tiny Discs First
Matchbook-size optical drives draw interest from music companies, MP3 player vendors.
Melissa Perenson, PCWorld.com and Douglas F. Gray, IDG News Service
Tuesday, June 19, 2001
http://pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,53207,00.asp
Imation will be the first U.S. manufacturer of storage products that use technology from DataPlay, which has figured out how to cram as much as 500MB of data onto a disc the size of a matchbook.
DataPlay and Imation, the maker of a variety of data storage products, are making the announcement on Tuesday.
DataPlay unveiled its newest optical technology at the Consumer Electronics show earlier this year. The company is promoting the tiny, write-once disks as an alternative to flash memory cards widely used in portable devices--and especially suited to storing digital music.
The durable disks are expected to cost between $5 and $12 when the devices and media start shipping in the fourth quarter of this year. Players and recorders are expected to sell for $199 to $299, says Dave Davies, DataPlay's chief technical officer.
Tiny Drives Target Tunes
DataPlay's aim was to develop a very small storage device that would use little power for portable devices, possibly even fitting into cell phones, Davies says. DataPlay claims the physical engine is the smallest optical drive ever built, with a tiny optical head that's smaller than the head of a matchstick.
The technology is expected to be used most widely for music players at first and is capable of storing up to four complete music albums on a single disc. But it is well suited to store multimedia and data, too, he notes. One disc could handle "an entire typical 90-minute movie," Davies says. The densities are approximately equivalent to DVD, he says. Samsung and Toshiba are among the licensees.
The discs will be available blank or with recorded content that you can purchase in portions by obtaining a key for each additional segment, Davies says. Or, you can download content from a store kiosk.
"You can [unlock] it song by song or album by album," Davies says. "This way, you have the virtues of downloading without the problems." The company envisions the optical device as a place to archive family photos or documents--and its archive approach is the reason for the write-once restriction.
The company is also developing a way to integrate its format with existing Windows files, so a DataPlay disc can appear as another drive on your PC, and you could drag and drop files between it and other types of drives.
Plenty of Partners
DataPlay's technology has already caught the attention of the recording industry. Among the content backers are BMG Entertainment, EMI Group, and Universal Music, which have indicated plans to sell albums that have been recorded on DataPlay's disks.
Imation will be a semi-exclusive worldwide distribution partner and will market both blank and recorded digital media using the DataPlay technology, the companies say. Imation was among the companies that contributed to DataPlay's latest round of funding, worth $55 million, announced earlier this month. Other backers include Eastman Kodak, Intel, Sonic Blue, and Universal.
Archos Reduces Jukebox 6000 MP3 Player Price to $249
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/010619/nytu075.html
IRVINE, Calif., June 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Archos Technology has reduced the price of its Jukebox MP3 Player to only $249, a $100 price reduction from the original price, for Archos' portable, palm-size MP3 Player and 6 GB hard drive, which permits up to 6000 minutes or 150 audio CDs of high-quality MP3 music or data files (text, images, presentations, e-mail, video, etc.) on a single, easy-to-use playback-only unit.
In addition, the Jukebox 6000 player's USB interface can be connected to any PC or Macintosh, notebook or desktop computer, making it the perfect mobile storage solution. The Jukebox 6000 is available worldwide for both PC and Mac platforms. Both versions include the USB connection cable and the award-winning MusicMatch(TM) Jukebox software, which allows the user to customize their own MP3 playlists.
The Jukebox 6000 Player is the winner of a number of awards, including the RetailVision® Best Product Peripheral Award, the Product Excellence Award from the French magazine, PC Achat, the Silver Award from the English magazine, PCHome, plus the 5 Star Award from MP3.com
For additional information, write to Archos Technology, 15375 Barranca Parkway, #J101, Irvine, Calif. 92618, visit http://www.archos.com or call 949-453-1121.
About Archos, SA
Archos Technology, based in Irvine, Calif., the U. S. division of Archos SA, Paris, France, has designed and manufactured peripherals for notebook and desktop computers since 1988. Archos products include mobile solutions for professionals on the move, such as the Jukebox 6000, MiniCDRW, MiniDVD, MiniHD, FireHD and others. Archos products are lightweight and multiplatform, easily moveable from PC to Mac. Archos engineers are continuously creating new standards by Thinking Smaller.
SOURCE: Archos Technology
OT: $200 digital birdhouse:
http://activexray.com/rockm.htm
Imation and DataPlay Announce Strategic Partnership; Agreements Include Manufacturing and Distribution
TUESDAY, JUNE 19, 2001 7:01 AM
http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/f_headline.cgi?day0/211702043&ticker=imn
OAKDALE, Minn., Jun 19, 2001 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Imation Corp. (NYSE:IMN), a worldwide leader in data storage and information management, and DataPlay, the developer of the universal media format for all things digital, today announced they have finalized a series of agreements related to the upcoming introduction of DataPlay digital media. These agreements position Imation as the first U.S.-based manufacturer of both blank and pre-recorded DataPlay digital media, as well as the semi-exclusive worldwide distribution partner.
"With its long history and development experience in optical storage technologies, Imation will be a valuable addition to DataPlay's team of strategic partners," said Steve Volk, chairman and CEO of DataPlay. "We will also benefit from Imation's extensive worldwide distribution capabilities as DataPlay penetrates the global market."
DataPlay selected Imation to be the first U.S.-based manufacturer of both blank and pre-recorded DataPlay digital media based on its manufacturing excellence and technology leadership. Imation plans to manufacture the media in its Wahpeton, N.D. plant, which was recently selected by Industry Week, the leading manufacturing management magazine, as one of the "14 Best Manufacturing Plants in North America and Europe." The award recognizes world-class manufacturing capabilities based on the company's performance metrics and practices in such categories as benchmarking, community involvement, customer and supplier relations, employee involvement, environment and safety programs, inventory management, manufacturing operations and flexibility, market results, productivity, quality, and use of technology.
"DataPlay digital media, with its unique size, capacity and functionality, has the potential to deliver the most universal, portable and cost-effective digital media solution available in the marketplace," said Steve Ladwig, senior vice president of Imation Corp., and president of Imation Data Storage and Information Management. "Imation is partnering with DataPlay because its technology shows strong growth potential and the opportunity to successfully compete against smaller form factor media already in the market."
Imation was also among a group of leading consumer electronic device manufacturers, technology companies, and retail distributors who recently made significant investments in DataPlay's latest round of financing, which raised an additional $55 million.
In addition to its position as a media manufacturer, Imation will be the semi-exclusive worldwide distribution partner of blank DataPlay digital media. DataPlay digital media enables access to all forms of digital content across all digital devices and platforms, including music, images, documents, software, games, video and more. One 500MB digital media can hold more than 11 hours of music downloads or five complete pre-recorded albums of CD-quality music, hundreds of high-resolution photographs, or dozens of games.
In January of this year, DataPlay won the Best of Show Award for Mobile Devices and Best Overall Lifestyle Product at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, an event that has built a reputation for being the preeminent venue for the industry's most promising companies and products. DataPlay was recognized for its value, usability, inventiveness and design. DataPlay also received the CES Innovations 2001 award in the Blank Media category at the show in recognition of its innovative consumer electronics product.
DataPlay is slated for commercial availability in Q4 2001.
About DataPlay, Inc.
DataPlay, Inc. was incorporated in November 1998 to develop a Web-enabled digital content recording and distribution media for portable Internet appliances and hand-held consumer electronic and entertainment devices. Headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, the Company employs more than 175 people in the United States, Singapore and Japan. Visit DataPlay on the Internet at www.dataplay.com.
About Imation Corp.
Imation Corp. is a $1.2 billion global company widely recognized as a leader in removable data storage and color image management.
Imation removable data storage offerings are a key ingredient in much of the world's technology infrastructure - from corporate data centers, to networks, to small businesses and home users. The product line is one of the broadest in the industry, with magnetic and optical products for the enterprise data center, the network environment, and the consumer. For business users, Imation magnetic tape cartridges deliver reliable data storage in data processing, backup and archive applications. Imation's storage consulting services help customers to improve performance, maximize efficiency, and minimize cost for a multitude of storage environments. Consumers use Imation's broad range of digital media, drives and accessories to store photos, data, music and more. On its own and through industry alliances, Imation continues to pioneer today's proven tape, optical and diskette technologies. Data storage revenues were $866 million in 2000.
Imation's Color Technologies division offers the recognized industry-standard for color accuracy with the MatchPrint brand of analog and digital proofing systems. Imation's color proofing systems ensure accurate color in printed materials ranging from magazines to packaging to advertising materials. The Company's color calibration software is embedded in an increasing number of OEMs' printing and copying equipment. Color Technologies revenues were $273 million in 2000.
Imation Digital Solutions and Services (DSS) is focused in two areas - OEM Services and Document Imaging. Imation DSS services wide-format color and imaging equipment through relationships with large OEMs. In Document Imaging, Imation DSS is a system integrator for customers with wide-format engineering document imaging systems who are migrating from analog to digital systems. DSS revenues were $94 million in 2000.
As of March 31, 2001, Imation employed approximately 4,200 people worldwide. The Company has sales in over 60 countries with international revenues contributing 45% of total sales. Additional information about Imation is available on the Company's website at http://www.imation.com, or by calling Imation at 1.888.466.3456. To receive recent news releases, corporate information and related shareholder services, call Imation's shareholder information line at 1.888.IMN.NYSE (1.888.466.6973).
Imation is a trademark of Imation Corp. DataPlay is a trademark of DataPlay Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Certain information contained in this news release, which does not relate to historical financial information may be deemed to constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause the Company's actual results in the future to differ materially from its historical results and those presently anticipated or projected. Among these factors are the Company's ability to meet its cost reduction and revenue growth targets, its ability to implement its restructuring program on a timely basis and to achieve the projected benefits, its ability to introduce new offerings in a timely manner, the competitive pricing environment, foreign currency fluctuations, the ability of Imation to secure adequate supply of certain high demand products, the ready availability and price of energy, the market acceptance of newly introduced product and service offerings, the rate of decline for certain existing products as well as various factors set forth in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
CONTACT: Imation Data Storage & Information Management, Oakdale
Jennifer Finzen, 651/704-3558
jfinzen@imation.com
or
Fleishman-Hillard, Inc.
Sarah McNeil, 612/573-3124
mcneils@fleishman.com
or
Dotted Line Communications for DataPlay
Aimee Clark, 415/292-1933
aimee@dottedlinecomm.com
URL: http://www.businesswire.com
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Copyright (C) 2001 Business Wire. All rights reserved.
KEYWORD: MINNESOTA NORTH DAKOTA COLORADO
INDUSTRY KEYWORD: COMPUTERS/ELECTRONICS
ELECTRONIC
GAMES/MULTIMEDIA
HARDWARE
INTERNET
SOFTWARE
MARKETING
AGREEMENTS
MP3 Rivals Find Consumer Acceptance Elusive
by Mark Lewis, June 18, 2001
http://news.webnoize.com/item.rs?ID=13402
Continuing a three-year fight to displace MP3 as a digital audio standard, everyone from Microsoft to open-source developers are butting their heads against interoperability and a lack of consumer acceptance.
Since 1999, a string of challengers have sought to topple MP3 by appealing to a particular section of the digital distribution chain. AT&T and Dolby's Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) and Lucent Technologies' EPAC tried to win the content industry by carrying the torches of better fidelity and compression, but neither was used in enough consumer encoding applications to dislodge MP3 [see 06.10.99 Bottling Digital Music: To MP3 or Not MP3].
But new challengers keep appearing, now trying to serve the music industry's prime requirements for copy-control to reduce piracy and access-control to institute "pay per listen" services.
Several small firms have tried to deliver security, but RealNetworks and Microsoft's mass distribution of millions of software players have pushed their firms to the top. Despite Real's alliance with three major labels in a forthcoming subscription service called MusicNet, some analysts and engineers see new signs that Microsoft's Windows Media could top Real. That's because Microsoft has fortified its rights management technology by deeply connecting it to its globally dominant PC operating system (OS); it's even engineered security technology so that a software hack won't work on machines other than the one used to create it. What's more, Microsoft plans to integrate its media player into its OS in the same way it bundled its Internet browser several years ago.
Microsoft's main target is acceptance by the content industry. Consumers are supposed to be tugged along because Windows Media offers them higher compression and supposedly saves them the hassle of downloading multiple plug-ins, said Geordie Wilson, a Windows Media product manager. According to Wilson, Real's early success in MusicNet with AOL Time Warner, EMI Group and Bertelsmann won't lock Microsoft out, because "the labels are interested in ultimately working with a variety of partners." Yet systems will have to work together, challenging Microsoft's long-standing view that its server software, operating system, player and rights management technology will become an interoperable standard.
"I'm not sure [interoperability] is a problem that needs to be solved right now," Wilson said. "One of the benefits, I suppose, of the kind of competition you have going on right now is that you have many companies, many parties, working very hard to build a better mouse trap."
Yet the standardization afforded by MP3 -- despite its outdated compression technology and impoverished fidelity -- was one of the main reasons that jukebox developers and device manufacturers have supported the format.
"I don't understand where the incentive is for software developers and device manufacturers to create the babble of competing formats, when their model of success revolves around MP3," said Eric Scheirer, an analyst with Forrester Research, based in Cambridge, Mass.
Like Microsoft, Thomson Multimedia is pushing a new format: a high-octane version of MP3 called MP3Pro that could earn Thomson royalty fees and advance its device business over rivals SonicBlue and Sony Electronics. The availability of jukebox encoders and interoperability with Microsoft's forthcoming XP operating system could determine MP3Pro's fate, though the MP3 namesake and better compression may lure consumers away from Windows Media [see 06.15.01 Thomson Counts on CE Makers, Consumers to Adopt New MP3 Format].
Once a defender of format neutrality, RealNetworks has become increasingly proprietary in its move to construct the MusicNet's platform, which will have to be used by distributors such as Napster and America Online. By sealing music from three major labels in its own software environment, Real gains control over consumer relationships and can further explore audience-driven business models.
Yet lingering questions about MusicNet's usage restrictions -- and the fundamental issue of whether consumers want "subscription rental" music -- mean that Real could be placing a narrow bet. Real's comeback strategy could still be a multi-format environment, and some analysts expect to see a relationship with Universal Music Group's subscription service PressPlay, which will compete with MusicNet.
Outside the margins of proprietary software is Xiphophorus' Ogg Vorbis, an open-source compression technology that developers can use free of charge. But device support from heavyweights such as SonicBlue, Thomson, Samsung and Sony continues to elude developers. According to Scheirer, the technology may a better candidate for video game developers, since they won't have to pay royalties on the hidden software that plays background music in games [see 11.22.00 Quietly Slipping into Audio Software, Vorbis Wants to Dethrone MP3].
The fate of Sony's ATRAC3 is less clear than AAC, the engine behind Universal's first download system and a strong candidate for the two companies' subscription service Pressplay. Some Sony Electronics' devices, of course, support ATRAC3, but other device manufacturers have been anxious since last fall to narrow the number of formats they support. Doubts about multiple music labels supporting either of those formats have caused some device manufacturers to place their bets with MP3 and Windows [see 01.24.01 Universal Source Says Sony Plans to Obtain Important Download Technology from Universal].
The lack of widespread applications that allow consumers to record their CDs to AAC and ATRAC3 haven't made the two formats powerful candidates for mass consumer adoption either. And Dolby Labs' aggressive attempts to prevent unlicensed AAC encoders may have worked against the technology, reserving it for a clique of content companies that promise to only use it alongside encryption technology [see 11.21.00 Pressured by Dolby, Open-Source Audio Developer Takes Down Software].
The 6GB Nomad Jukebox currently accounts for more than 50 percent of Creative's music player sales. Our primary gripe is that the Jukebox is about the same size as the portable CD player that we've been trying to leave behind--not to mention heavier.
But the company has plans to address that, and by September it will have two new Jukebox products on the market. The first, which Creative is currently referring to as the ever-catchy Prototype 1 (which sadly, is a better name than that of many products on the market), is the snazzier-looking of the two. This totally new design, which is about the same shape and size as one of those Dictaphone voice recorders (about six inches tall and three inches wide), will offer about 6-10GB of storage and should cost around $299--the same price as the Intel Pocket Concert Audio Player, which offers 128MB of flash-based memory. While it's a huge size reduction from the current Nomad Jukebox, it's still larger, and likely heavier, than many other players on the market.
The second unit (yup, you guessed it, Prototype 2) looks like the current Nomad Jukebox, though shrunk down by 30 percent. But while the smaller size is certainly a welcome improvement, the bigger story is what's going inside the player. First off, Jukebox junior will hold between 10GB and 20GB of music. Creative is also considering equipping the new device with an IEEE 1394 (Firewire) connection, which would significantly speed up music transfer--assuming your PC supports it. Company officials are guessing that this unit will cost somewhere between $399 and $449.
http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/stories/story/0,10738,2706738,00.html
Sinman chats with Putnam...
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=698591 (5/15 PM)
FWIW ..I had a brief talk this afternoon with Robert and I asked about a few things. We did not speak in great lenghth as I was in the process of closing a few deals of my own. Happy to say I have more to invest on Monday:)
Robert was still very comfortable with previous statements regarding the upcoming financials. He said that fiscal year ending 2001- revenues to be released would be close to the past three years combined as previously announced. Of course no specific number was used but I feel that we wont have to worry about any 86K surprise for this quarter.
He also said that it was still very likely we would hear positive news regarding Platinum/Lanier by the end of the quarter. Product continues to ship and has all during this past quarter. This news is of course still in the hands of Platinum.
He also did not back off previous statements that we would hear of another OEM contract by the end of this quarter. I think what is important is that he mentioned that expected revenue numbers from this new deal would be relased as well in the form of a letter from Fred which will ouline what this new deal means to EDIG as well as a recap of the past fiscal year and quarter. Again this is in the hands of the OEM and no guaranttee can be given.
While timelines are out of EDIGS hands it does appear that there was no hesitation that things are progressing toward finally hearing of some of the things they have been working on.
Good luck to all..
Sinman
EDIG: Info for Investors (6/17 PM rNN)
General DD Info (Corporate profile, SEC filings, Patents, lots more):
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=66673 (revised 3/8)
Recent News and Opinions:
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=128599 (Thomson releases insecure MP3Pro)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=128649
and http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=128814 (Some Sensory stuff)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=128160 (Kenwood's WMA/MP3 entertainment hub)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=127988 (Olympus MP3/WMA/voice recorder)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=128309 (Vedalabs stuffs cat back in bag)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=127972 (Iomega is hip to TXN DSPs)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=127643 (New multimedia PDA from Toshiba)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=127591 (Treo up for FCC certification?)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=127390 (Seiko Mobile Entertainment 'Me-ism')
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=127295 (Duet name changed to PressPlay)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=127288 (New DataPlay write-up)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=126957 (TI?Sensory speech synthesis deal)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=126435 (Archos adds encoding to jukebox)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=126460 (cindere11y speaks w/Putnam)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=126430 (Upside article re RNWK)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=125842
and http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=126410
and http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=127265 (Compaq adds to digital audio line)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=125896 (BusyBump chats w/Putnam)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=125380 (Eastech e-mail re jukeboxe plans)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=125279 (Fortune article re digital music)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=125231 (Cisco gets Real)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=125215 (NY Times interview w/ BMG CEO)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=125201 (Panasonic SD card pricies to fall)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=125162 (Backgrounder on set-top boxes)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=124985
and http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=124986 (A look at Conversay's speech engine)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=124909 (Wired article re Napster)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=124819 (Toshiba maps flash strategy)
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=693968 (LQID VP sees a multi-codec future)
EDIG news and opinions (pre-6/9/01):
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=128798
2000 DD Summaries:
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=126095 (12/21/99 to 3/6/00)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=126094 (3/7/00 to 4/10/00)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=126093 (4/11/00 to 6/4/00)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=126076 (6/5/00-9/7/00)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=126074 (9/8/00-10/31/00)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=126069 (11/1/00-12/31/00)
Common Abbreviations:
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIGOT&read=4488
A look back at the early days on RB:
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=642371
===========================================================
Treo review compilation: http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=612321
===========================================================
EDIG Private board at RB:
(Basher-free, open to all who behave themselves)
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=300337 (Instructions for joining)
Free EDIG news e-mails via eGroups:
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=570639
Moderated EDIG boards (no bashers/spammers):
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/board.asp?board_id=299
http://www.siliconinvestor.com/stocktalk/subject.gsp?subjectid=51056
athomedad's EDIG Page:
http://www.edigpage.com
EDIG news and opinions (4/12/01-6/9/01)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=124068 (Duet quietly negotiating)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=124011 (Packers1 chats w/Putnam)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=123807 (SD Flash card prices falling)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=123637 (DataPlay closes another financing round)
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=690262 (Recent DataPlay article)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=121529 (SDMI unraveling?)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=121713 (A different take on SDMI)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=120920 (BestBuy cuts deal with RioPort)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=120860 (Ritek/DataPlay news)
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=689568 (Sentinel chats w/Putnam)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=120678 (Fortune article re RioPort)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=120335 (Sharp intros new SOC)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=120410 (STM plans for DataPlay chips)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=119533 (CREAF exec re jukebox strategy)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=119031 Sharp picks Intel chip for new PDA)
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=687441 (GreaterGood re our new CFO)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=118479 (EDIG adds new COO; CFO departs)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=118261 (Sega harmonizing with the Web?)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=117975 (Trenddetector chats w/Putnam)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=117876 (EDIG and Sensory at Portable Design Conference)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=117911 (Toshiba and Sensory into VTT chips)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=116800
and http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=118477 (New wearable from XYBR, IBM &TXN)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=116628 (Market for medical hand-helds seen growing)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=115967 (Multi-codec Xdio player)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=115871 (Qualcomm cuts VTT deal w/Conversay)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=115251 (Older article re the Korean MP3 scene)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=114234 (Samsung & Octal developing STBs)
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=684582 (Nekos chats w/Putnam)
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=683939 (DABOSS e-mail from DataPlay)
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=682599 (BusyBump chats w/Putnam)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=109481 (Vivendi/Universal buys MP3.com)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=109041 (Toshiba introduces 5 & 10 GB 1.8" HDs)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=108959
and http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=680976 (Sentinel speaks w/Putnam)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=108627 (SDM bogs down again)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=108476 (Cksla speaks w/Putnam)
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=680645 (RNWK unveils download service before Congress)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=108126 (Sigmatel chip powers Eastech ET-301)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=106017 (Sony's Playstation gets Real)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=105106 (InterTrust Announces Secure Media Player Development Suite)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=105146 (Bostonredsox speaks w/mp3extreme)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=104057 (3 new openings at EDIG)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=101870 (Bostonredsox speaks w/Hammacher)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=102208 (Samsung making a run on Sony?)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=99994 (Some details of STM's DataPlay chips)
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=676522 (Pam digs into Eastech)
http://www.eigernet.co.kr/products/mp3/d100.htm (Eiger DataPlayer specs)
http://www.amaxhk.com/products/napa/dp600/dp600.htm (Amax DataPlayer specs)
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=676116 (Giants at RB e-mails Putnam)
http://db2.jobstreet.com/jassist/preview.asp?advertiser_id=9564 (Backgrounder on DataPlay Singapore)
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=672506 (BusyBump chats w/Putnam)
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=668929 (Intel orders MP3 players from Eastech)
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=669383 (Eastech lands Sanyo order)
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=668935 (Treo ads flying high)
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=668916 (Recent Treo sightings)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=91844 (EDIG mention in Volan ad)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=90491 (Recent RP e-mails at RB)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=84624 (Cksla's XYBR chronicles)
hhttp://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=83856
and http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=84611 (Hammacher-Schlemmer catalog offers Treo)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=83521 (Brewmeister visits EDIG)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=81983 (Xybernaut to collaborate with IBM, TXN)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=82749 (More re XYBR)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=81621 (Rioport intros Music Delivery Service)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=81406 (Makomemoney chats w/Putnam)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=81294 (New look jukebox from Eastech)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=79586 (Packers1 chats w/Putnam)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=79571 (Trillium chats w/Putnam)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=79567 (New DataPay player from A-Max)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=79579 (Multi-codec player from A-Max)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=76832 (Intel VTT plans for China market)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=76546 (InHand partners w/Conversay)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=76465 (MP2000 details at Global Resource)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=76168
and http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=76246 (New IBM platform for internet appliances)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=76119
and http://www.siliconinvestor.com/stocktalk/msg.gsp?msgid=15637828 (New XYBR/IBM wearable computer due)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=75782 (Some ITRU customer woes)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=75784 (Loudeye RIFs and plans roll-out)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=75578 (WSJ re MSFT vs MP3)
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=75655 (POTCE update re Treo)
http://ragingbull.lycos.com/mboard/boards.cgi?board=EDIG&read=659615 (Eastech update per unclejed47)
EDIG news and opinions (pre-4/12/01):
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=119512