Napster has signed a licensing deal for Relatable's new commercial release of its advanced acoustic fingerprinting technology, TRM, which uniquely identifies audio recordings based on the recording itself. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The Alexandria, Va.-based TRM analyzes the acoustical properties of a recording's waveform to identify it precisely, regardless of its audio format, bit rate or minor signal distortion.

"Digital fingerprinting technologies are developing rapidly, and Relatable's new acoustic fingerprinting technology shows great promise," said Hank Barry, Napster's interim CEO. "We are now working closely with Relatable's engineers to coordinate their technology with our file filtering systems; we hope they will be a substantial part of our overall filtering solution."

Engineering teams from the two companies are working together to refine and optimize TRM so that it can be incorporated into Napster's current file screening system and into Napster's new membership service.

"TRM will help ensure that the millions of music files transferred through the new Napster system will be accurately monitored and it will enable the appropriate allocation of royalties to artists, music publishers and record companies," said Pat Breslin, CEO of Relatable. "TRM delivers unprecedented speed and can effectively scale to handle the volume of the Napster system," added Breslin.

Relatable's personalization technology for digital music, the Relatable Engine, features a patent pending approach -- feature-guided collaborative filtering -- that can help create personalized music offerings. Relatable technologies are platform and device agnostic and can integrate with any Internet-enabled device.

Digital entertainment research firm Webnoize Friday weighed in on the news by saying said the decision by Napster to license fingerprint technology could enable Napster to track MP3s across its service, and in turn pay copyright owners for their use.

The firm pointed out the irony of this development when it noted that the deal comes two weeks after Napster told a federal court that audio fingerprinting to block copyrighted recordings is neither required by previous court decisions nor technically "feasible."

Webnoize said Relatable's technology could allow Napster to build a client-side system for taking fingerprints of users' MP3 collections and adding back catalog, live and out-of-print tracks to its database.

Webnoize researcher Gregor Rohda said the "effort needed to defeat Napster's current text-based file security versus a fingerprint system is like shoplifting a candy bar versus heisting a bank."

"Relatable's technology moves Napster a big step closer to having a viable commercial service," Rohda said. "However, implementing this system will require significant effort."

Roy Mark is co-managing editor of dc.internet.com