Audible Magic Press Release
Audible Magic Applies Patented Technology to Provide Audio Identification for Streaming Media
LOS GATOS, California — October 16, 2000 — Audible Magic Corporation (www.audiblemagic.com), a startup that provides solutions for identifying audio content over the Internet, today announced its acquisition of Muscle Fish LLC, a Berkeley-based company founded by acoustic engineers formerly from Yamaha Music Technologies, Inc. Muscle Fish engineers pioneered the use of content-based analysis and classification of audio files with over six years of extensive research and development.
Muscle Fish’s invention, embodied in a patent issued last year, measures a variety of psycho-perceptual characteristics of the audio file. These measurements can be used to analyze, compare, classify, and retrieve audio files. The technology has been demonstrated to be accurate at exact pattern matching for a range of file formats, including streaming audio on the Internet. In addition, it can be used to match and identify “similar sounding” audio files, returning a list of closest matches to the user.
Audible Magic has demonstrated that the technology is robust enough to identify streaming content for all streaming formats. With over 10,000 Internet radio stations, streaming is fast becoming the preferred method of delivering content, and as a result, the market potential for Audible Magic identification services is growing exponentially.
Audible Magic is currently working with the digital media industry to apply this versatile technology. “Muscle Fish invested over six years of hard work pioneering the concepts and developing the core technology,” stated Vance Ikezoye, CEO and co-founder of Audible Magic. “Now that their innovative concepts have been accepted and proven, Audible Magic intends to monetize their work by using the technology to enable a wide variety of applications.”
“Audible Magic’s software allows record companies and online music companies to do many things they weren’t able to do before,” said Malcolm Maclachlan, a senior analyst in Consumer eCommerce Media at International Data Corporation. He added, “For instance, it is now possible to run a peer to peer subscription and still pay artists the correct amount of money for their work. Consumers, in turn, can now be guaranteed that the song they download is the one they want, and will have a certain standard of sound quality.”
The technology has been licensed and is in use today by a number of companies including Virage (NASDAQ: VRGE) and the Bulldog Group, a privately held media asset software company. In addition, the company has demonstrated the accuracy of the technology, claiming automated song recognition accuracy above 95% today for both Internet and traditional broadcast radio broadcasts as well as highly compressed MP3 files.
Audible Magic acquired all Muscle Fish assets, which included numerous software applications, as well as the patented technology. “The value of the Muscle Fish acquisition will be seen not only in audio content identification, but with the digital media access, control and monetization opportunities it enables,” according to Ikezoye. “We are already working with a number of customers on some very intriguing applications and have multiple patents pending, so stay tuned.”
About Audible Magic, Inc.
Audible Magic Corporation provides content management and anti-piracy services to the media and entertainment industries as well as to business, governmental, and educational institutions. The company's offerings utilize patented content identification technologies and an extensive reference database of audio and video content. Its digital technology and services are designed to monitor, track, manage, filter, and monetize digital content in all of its forms. The company has been active providing solutions for the Web 2.0 user-generated content video sharing sites.
Audible Magic has long-term relationships with the major record labels that have registered their content in the company’s database that holds one of the largest collections of copyrighted digital song recording fingerprints in the world. Corporate partners include EMI Recorded Music, Palisade Systems, Sony/BMG Music, Universal Music Group, V2 Music, Warner Music Group, and EMI Recorded Music. Audible Magic’s technology is also employed by Grouper, iMesh and PlayLouder MSP music service. Other major market customers include over 70 educational institutions and the media manufacturing industry. Audible Magic’s products include the CopySense P2P Plug-In; CopySense Network Appliance, and RepliCheck.
The Company was founded in 1999, and it operates from offices in Los Gatos, Los Angeles, and Berkeley, California.
For more information, visit Audible Magic’s website at www.audiblemagic.com.
For more information, please contact:
Audible Magic Media & Analyst Inquiries
Sarah McMullenMcMullen & Company
310.283.7907
smcmullen@earthlink.net