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EMI MUSIC MAKES DIGITAL CATALOG
AVAILABLE TO LEGAL
PEER-TO-PEER SERVICE MASHBOXX
NEW
YORK, JULY 28, 2006
EMI Music, the world's largest independent music company, has agreed to make
its entire catalog of digital recordings available to Mashboxx, a legal
peer-to-peer (P2P) service currently in development.
The Mashboxx P2P software or "client," will allow consumers to preview and
purchase copyrighted music content from EMI artists from within existing P2P
networks, giving music fans the ability to take advantage of the community and
music discovery aspects of P2P services while also ensuring that artists and
copyright owners are compensated. EMI will make its entire digital catalog in
the US available for the service. EMI also plans to make additional repertoire
from its international digital catalog available when Mashboxx rolls out its
service in additional markets in the future.
The Mashboxx client accesses existing P2P networks, and allows users to perform
searches for artists, albums and tracks. Using filtering technology, Mashboxx
can identify tracks that labels like EMI have authorized for trade,
monetization or blocking, and returns search results accordingly. These results
are then presented to the user, who can choose to sample tracks for free, or
purchase them as downloads. In order to make its music available through
legitimate P2P services including Mashboxx, EMI is having its digital catalog
fingerprinted by SNOCAP
Offers Free,
Try-Before-You-Buy Download Option
For the free, sampler option, users will be able to play full length tracks up
to five times. These sampler tracks will expire after they have been played
five times. After five plays, users will only be able to play a 30-second clip
of the track, unless they decide to purchase it. This try-before-you-buy
feature was exclusively designed by Mashboxx for usage within P2P platforms.
According to the most recent NPD Digital Music Study, nearly 75 percent of P2P
users found sampling to be important before deciding whether to purchase music.
A La Carte Paid Download
Option
For the a la carte download option, permanent, full-fidelity tracks downloaded
via Mashboxx can be burned onto CD up to seven times, played on five PCs, and
transferred to Windows Media-compatible portable players an unlimited number of
times.
"Legal peer-to-peer services which offer consumers a great user experience and
which compensate creators appropriately are good for music fans, good for
artists, and good for the digital music market as a whole," said David Munns,
Chairman and CEO of EMI Music North America and Vice Chairman of EMI Music
worldwide. "When it rolls out, Mashboxx will be a no-obligation way for fans to
really immerse themselves in discovering music, turning their friends on to
what they like and getting excited about artists and music they've not yet
heard. It has the potential to be a very good revenue stream for those who make
their living from creating and investing in music."
EMI's complete digital catalog of recorded music in the US will be available
through Mashboxx when it launches. The Mashboxx application will soon be
available to beta testers, and additional details about the beta service are
available at the Mashboxx web site, www.mashboxx.com.
"Alain Levy, David Munns and their EMI team have certainly proven that they are
a forward thinking group in the digital space. They have further reinforced
that by partnering with Mashboxx and our unique offering. On a personal note, I
am grateful for the terrific amount of support that David has given us all
along the way. We all look forward to working with EMI to deliver millions of
authorized tracks from great EMI artists like Coldplay, Dem Franchize Boyz,
Gorillaz, The Rolling Stones, Joss Stone, KT Tunstall, Keith Urban and Robbie
Williams among many others, to our future customers."
About Mashboxx
Mashboxx is the world's first open P2P application with content authorized and
licensed directly by major record labels. The software will allow consumers to
search for content on most of the major file sharing networks and will offer
the largest selection of authorized music downloads yet to be found online. The
company was founded in September of 2004 and, will be based in New York with
offices in London in fall 2006
About EMI Music
EMI is the world's largest independent music company, operating directly in 50
countries. Its EMI Music division represents more than 1,000 artists spanning
all musical tastes and genres. Its record labels include Angel, Astralwerks,
Blue Note, Capitol, Capitol Nashville, EMI Classics, EMI CMG, EMI Records, EMI
Televisa Music, Manhattan, Mute, Parlophone and Virgin. For further information
on EMI, please visit: www.emigroup.com
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