Loudeye Technologies Inc. is beginning to see a payoff in its revamped strategy of
providing digital music archiving and distribution.
In April, the Seattle, Wash.-based company announced its plans to concentrate on its business of providing
infrastructure technology to enable delivery of digital music.
On Wednesday, Loudeye announced an agreement with their newest client —
AOL Time Warner. Its stock shot through the roof, up 50
cents or 46 percent at $1.58, though it still stands well below its all-time
high of $23.88.
Loudeye was founded in 1997 as an encoding company to help customers
(mainly media companies) transform their analog content into digital. But as
the media companies demanded greater infrastructure services to deliver
digital content, Loudeye branched out into ASP businesses.
The company shored up the agreements necessary with the likes of BMG
Music, EMI, Sony, and Universal Music Group and began supplying the record
labels’ music samples to a slew of customers like Amazon,
Barnsandnoble.com, CNN, etc. To complement the music sampling business,
Loudeye also bought the assets of OnAir Streaming Networks, a developer of
online radio
applications, and earlier this year acquired DiscoverMusic, a sample provider that
also had an arsenal of album cover art and data to support online music
retailers.
Under the latest agreement, Loudeye will provide America Online with
music samples, music catalog encoding and metadata services. The multi-year
agreement calls for Loudeye to support digital music content across certain
AOL properties including AOL Music’s Spinner.com, the Internet radio
service.
In addition to music samples, Loudeye will provide comprehensive
digital media services including the encoding of Spinner’s music library.
Additionally, Loudeye will provide the digital content metadata, enabling
AOL to offer a more
robust music experience for its listeners.
“Loudeye’s solutions will help provide us with greater flexibility and
enhance the audio quality of our programming across our range of music
services,” said Kevin Conroy, Head of AOL Music at America Online Inc.
