All Media Guide Introduces SonicGuide Music Sampling Service

Business Wire, July 16, 2003

Entertainment, Technology & New Media Editors

ANN ARBOR, Mich.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 16, 2003

Rights Secured To Titles From All Five Major Music Companies;

TransWorld Chooses SonicGuide(SM) To Provide Samples For Its Websites

All Media Guide (AMG), a leading provider of descriptive content and content management technology that support and enhance the merchandising and use of entertainment media, today announced the introduction of AMG SonicGuide(SM), an advanced music sampling service offering unique music exploration features and seamless integration with AMG's All Music Guide. With the launch of SonicGuide, AMG now offers entertainment retailers a comprehensive music merchandising solution, pairing the industry's premier music database, All Music Guide, with the most advanced music sampling service on the market.

AMG has entered into non-exclusive licensing agreements with each of the five major music companies -- Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, BMG Entertainment and EMI Recorded Music, North America. Under these agreements, AMG has the rights to feature music samples and cover art from each company's catalog of recordings for its SonicGuide music sampling service.

AMG SonicGuide provides the tools to create a music sampling presentation designed to meet the core retailing objectives -- increasing traffic, sales, and customer satisfaction. Features include:

-- The largest sample catalog in the market with over 5 million

tracks from more than 310,000 albums.

-- Built-in links to both AMG's All Music Guide images and

descriptive data and AEC One Stop Group's commerce data for

seamless integration that ensures all samples are available

for listening.

-- SmartSelect(TM), a proprietary "smart" technology that

analyzes each song individually and chooses the most

representative sample, most often capturing the song's "hook."

-- "Best Of" Data Sets, exclusive, AMG-authored, pre-assembled

data sets that identify and provide samples for the "best of"

each genre, style, hundreds of themes, and more than 100,000

performing artists.

-- A complete hosting and delivery infrastructure with

geographically redundant facilities that are optimized for the

fastest response time through proximity load-balancing.

-- Support of both Microsoft(R) Windows Media(TM) Audio

(utilizing Fast Streaming, an instant-on playback experience

that eliminates buffering time), and RealNetworks(R) Real

Audio(R).

Trans World Entertainment has selected AMG SonicGuide to provide music samples for its websites. "At Trans World, we are committed to providing our customers with the best tools for discovering music," said Fred Fox, Trans World's Executive Vice President of Merchandising and Marketing. "AMG's SonicGuide provides us with feature-rich tools to build that experience."

"We're excited to be launching SonicGuide at such a dynamic time in the music industry," stated Lonnie Chenkin, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development, Alliance Entertainment. "SonicGuide, with its unique and innovative features, takes music sampling to a new level. And, integrated with the AMG data, it provides an unmatched commerce-enhancing solution for our licensees and their customers."

For further information, and to demo the SonicGuide samples, log on to http://www.AMGSonicGuide.com.

About AMG

All Media Guide is a leading provider of descriptive content and content management technology that support and enhance the merchandising and use of entertainment media. AMG has created the world's largest and most comprehensive information databases for music, video, DVDs, and video games. The AMG databases -- All Music Guide, All Movie Guide, and All Game Guide -- are licensed by major retailers and Internet sites and are available to the public through its websites (http://www.allmusic.com; http://www.allmovie.com; http://www.allgame.com) and through its published works. AMG is a division of Alliance Entertainment Corp., a leading provider of business-to-business supply chain management solutions to the home entertainment marketplace.