Acumen Solutions Facilitates Expansion of SoundExchange Music Royalty Distribution Engine

Business Wire, August 25, 2004

VIENNA, Va. -- Acumen Solutions(R), Inc., a leading management and technology consulting firm based in Vienna, Virginia, has been engaged by SoundExchange(R) to enhance the system by which royalties are administered and distributed to sound recording copyright owners (SRCOs) and artists for noninteractive digital transmissions. SoundExchange, a non profit performance rights organization, is the first in the United States created to license, collect and distribute royalties earned from the public performance of sound recordings. SoundExchange is responsible for collecting and distributing royalty payments for all domestic digital music services operating under the statutory license provided by the Digital Millineum Copyright Act. Acumen Solutions has started the effort to design, develop and implement system-wide enhancements to SoundExchange's existing application to extend the efficiency of the organization's royalty management and distributions.

Using J2EE, Oracle and IBM/Rationale technologies Acumen Solutions will dramatically improve the overall performance of royalty check processing and streamline the performance-based distribution process, ensuring the timely and accurate payout of funds to artists, unions and record companies. In addition, the enhanced system will be more scalable to handle future growth and added distribution functionality.

Applauding the benefits that the new platform will offer, Acumen Solutions' President and CEO, David Joubran stated, "SoundExchange is truly making strides to ensure that artists and sound recording companies receive fair compensation for digital transmissions. Acumen Solutions is excited to participate in this endeavor, which will change the digital music landscape, making access to everyone's favorite tunes a positive experience for all parties involved."

"SoundExchange is looking forward to this expansion and we are pleased to have Acumen Solutions as our technology partner in this endeavor," said Barrie Kessler, SoundExchange's Chief Operating Officer. "SoundExchange is dedicated to distributing royalties to the many thousands of artists and record companies in a timely and cost effective manner. Acumen Solutions will assist us in deploying "best of breed" technologies to ensure our continued success in this mission."

About Acumen Solutions(R)

Acumen Solutions, Inc., a privately held company based in Vienna, Va., is a leading management and technology consulting firm that uses a focused, results-oriented approach to develop client-specific solutions. Our team drives our clients' success by blending broad management consulting experience with vertical-market expertise in communications and media, financial services and government solutions. We help our clients increase revenue and decrease costs to gain a competitive advantage. For more information, visit www.acumensolutions.com.

About SoundExchange(R)

SoundExchange is the first performance rights organization in the United States to collect and distribute digital audio transmission royalties to featured artists and sound recording copyright owners. SoundExchange represents over 750 different record companies and thousands of recording artists and is seeking out more labels and artists who are owed royalties for sound recordings played on satellite or cable radio or streamed via non-interactive webcast. The nonprofit organization is governed equally by a board of artist and label representatives. SoundExchange's services include track level accounting of performances to all members and collection and distribution of foreign royalties to all members. SoundExchange invites all artists, labels and/or their representatives to visit SoundExchange's website at www.soundexchange.com.