Redwood City, CA — Silicon Valley start-up Liquid Audio is teaming with industry leader Dolby Labs to deliver breakthrough technology for streaming audio on the Internet. The companies claim that the new technology, to be released this fall, will revolutionize the way music is heard, bought, and delivered over the Internet. Computing giant Intel is also a partner in the initiative, which promises to bring true CD-quality music to the Internet in a practical way.
Music is one of the biggest user interests represented on the Web today. But concerns of the music industry in responding to that interest, such as sound quality, copyright and copy protection, have been overlooked by existing technologies.
“While there are solutions for radio quality audio, and utilities for adding audio to multimedia content on the Internet, there are no solutions addressing the requirements of the music industry for delivering high-quality music on the Web. By teaming with Dolby, we will set a higher standard for music on the Internet,” stated Gerry Kearby, co-founder and president of Liquid Audio. “Liquid Audio will remove the barriers to music on the Internet, and provide unlimited access to vast libraries of music titles, while protecting the rights and integrity of the artist.”
Liquid Audio is teaming with Dolby Labs, Intel Corp. and online service provider N2K Inc. in an effort to promote its audio system as an industry standard. Such a standard, if successful, could play a crucial role in the continued development of Web-based music retailing services. The company’s strategy is to distribute its technology via Internet sites that serve as outlets for music sampling. For instance, N2K plans to incorporate the audio standard into its Jazz Central Station and Roctropolis Web sites.
“The Liquid Audio team has a long track record with Dolby for delivering the very highest quality solutions for digital audio and music,” stated Ed Schummer, vice president of licensing at Dolby Labs. “Our proven audio compression technology combined with Liquid Audio’s comprehensive solution for the Internet promises to revolutionize music delivery on the Web.”
The new technology will be scalable, allowing the same audio stream to be accessed by users at varying bandwidth, from 28.8 kbaud and up. “Our server and encoder technology is focused on the professional audio industry,” says Philip Wiser, V-P of Engineering for Liquid Audio. “For example, the encoder tool will integrate smoothly with the workflow of a recording studio environment, so the engineer can take a stereo master and master it out to the net.” The first release of the technology will run under the Windows 95 operating system. Support for other production platforms will be added through plug-ins to existing workstation systems already on the market.
Liquid Audio’s strategic relationships will ensure wide-spread awareness of the new standard among PC, Web and music enthusiasts. “We are excited about Liquid Audio’s efforts to bring high-quality music capability into the connected PC,” stated Avram C. Miller, vice president and director of corporate business development at Intel Corporation.
In addition to securing major support from the audio and computer industries, Liquid Audio has made significant impressions on recording industry artists and insiders. “Delivering music over the Net opens up incredible possibilities. Until now, the sound has been terrible. The new technology of Liquid Audio is a vast improvement. Liquid Audio is also building in software to deal with copyright protection.” stated Jerry Harrison, formerly of Talking Heads and more recently producer of Live, Crash Test Dummies, and the BoDeans.
Liquid Audio was founded in January 1996 by an experienced management and engineering team comprised of veterans from the professional audio, music production, multimedia software and venture capital industries. The core team worked together to develop and build a leading company in the digital audio workstation market (Studer-Editech Dyaxis). Members of the company’s Advisory Board include senior executives and founders of prominent technology companies as well as highly-placed music industry professionals. The company is venture-funded, its lead investor is Hummer Winblad Venture Partners.
