LOUDEYE PACTS WITH AOL

Loudeye today announced it has pacted with America Online to provide AOL with music samples, music catalog encoding and something the company calls "metadata services."

Under the multi-year agreement, Loudeye will provide AOL with music samples and digital media service support for such AOL properties as Spinner.com. Loudeye will encode all of Spinner's music library, and, because of that "metadata" we mentioned earlier, Loudeye will enable AOL to offer a more "robust music experience" for its listeners.

"A critical part of AOL Music's integrated music platform includes the power to enable a seamless and high-quality listening experience," said Kevin Conroy, Head of AOL Music. "Loudeye's solutions will help provide us with greater flexibility and enhance the audio quality of our programming across our range of music services. And even though we’re not sure what ‘metadata’ is or how it will make a listening experience more ‘robust,’ or just what a ‘robust music experience’ means, we’re excited to talk about it in press release form."

"The AOL agreement demonstrates Loudeye's value to major media and entertainment companies seeking expertise and technology to leverage digital media in their business," said Loudeye CEO John T. Baker. " I dare anyone to measure their robustitude against ours. Ain’t nobody makin’ listening more robust than we are, and AOL knows it."