AT&T Corp. and music marketers Electric Artists Thursday announced plans to develop an e-commerce platform for digital music downloads.
Electric Artists will partner with AT&T to develop strategic relationships with music companies and artists to propel AT&T’s a2b music into prominence in the music download market.
AT&T hopes Electric Artists’ extensive music company client base will expand its e-commerce and distribution efforts and increased promotion opportunities.
The alliance between the two companies began with Electric Artists’s participation in the launch of AT&T’s a2b music.
Since the 1997 launch, a2b has seen nearly half its original staff defect into other firms.
a2b music recently modified its format to support Apple’s QuickTime 4 multimedia files as a copyright-protecting alternative to MP3.
AT&T was one of the founders of the Secure Digital Music Initiative Forum, which aims to create a voluntary digital music security specification.