LOS GATOS, California — February 26, 2001 — Audible Magic, creator of digital audio identification technologies and services, today announced PlayGen™, a service capable of rapidly and accurately identifying music streamed by Webcasters and other Internet sites and generating an immediate and accurate playlist based on actual songs played. PlayGen is a powerful solution for copyright owners, royalty monitoring associations, and music labels looking to track the public use of audio content. PlayGen is currently being tested with beta customers and will be widely available this spring.

PlayGen will make it easy for Webcasters to meet public use requirements specified in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and provides other benefits such as seamless click-through to information and e-commerce related to the identified audio. With the potential to identify all types of audio content, the company believes future uses of the PlayGen service will include monitoring traditional radio broadcasters, ads, jingles, and other copyrighted audio content. No integration or cooperation from the source being monitored is required for PlayGen to produce accurate playlist reports.

PlayGen uses Audible Magic’s patented content-based recognition and retrieval technology — Audible Match™ — to “listen” to and identify broadcast or streaming audio in real time. Audible Match provides a uniquely secure audio identification process that is not dependent on imbedded data that could be altered or removed, like watermarking or metadata. Instead, Audible Match analyzes the perceptual characteristics of the sound in a manner consistent with the frequency recognition capabilities of the human ear. A unique content-based “fingerprint” of the sound is created and matched against Audible Magic’s large database of copyrighted works or against a proprietary customer database.

With the use of a proprietary method of search to speed through a large database, Audible Match facilitates the fastest and most accurate identification of streaming audio and audio files across multiple formats and compression levels. Click-through purchase of a CD, instant response to an advertisement, ranking and royalty tracking of broadcast music, and audio-enabled searches are additional capabilities of Audible Magic’s proprietary Audible Match technology.

“There are established methods for traditional broadcast recognition, but the Internet presents media companies with new challenges,” notes Vance Ikezoye, Audible Magic CEO. “Audible Match brings accurate and quick identification of audio to businesses that have a stake in monitoring copyrighted material. We are happy to bring to market a technology that will help copyright holders track the use of their audio material and will help broadcasters with DMCA compliance.”

Audible Magic Corporation is the leading provider of content management and anti-piracy services. Its patented content identification technologies and extensive reference database of audio and video content enable the company to monitor, track, manage, filter and monetize multi-media digital content. The company’s core copyright-sensing technology, CopySense®, accurately identifies digital or broadcast media content based on the perceptual characteristics of the content itself. Built on a patented electronic fingerprinting process, the technology is robust, efficient, and massively scalable. Recognized throughout the music and video industry as the de factor leader in identification services, Audible Magic is headquartered in Los Gatos, California. Its customers include Web 2.0 websites, CD/DVD replicators, peer-to-peer networking companies, internet service providers and universities, which span the media and entertainment industries, major business, governmental and educational institutions markets.

For more information, visit Audible Magic’s website at www.audiblemagic.com or contact:

Audible Magic Media & Analyst Inquiries

Jay Friedman
Vice President of Marketing and Product Management
408-399-6405 x238
[email protected]