Sony, Realnetworks Team Up On Secure Electronic Music Distribution - Company Business and Marketing

EDP Weekly's IT Monitor, Jan 10, 2000

Deal Lets Users Download, Securely Transfer Digital Music From RealJukebox to Sony Audio Players

Last week at the Consumer Electronics Show, Sony Corp. and RealNetworks Inc. announced an alliance to enable consumers of RealJukebox with Sony's electronic music distribution technologies to easily download and securely transfer music to Sony's portable audio players.

RealNetworks plans to integrate support for Sony music technologies into RealJukebox, including ATRAC3, its sound compression format, as well as OpenMG copyright protection technology, the Sony Memory Stick and its portable audio players such as "Memory Stick Walkman" and "VAIO Music Clip." The enhancement to RealJukebox is expected to ship in the summer, and will be designed for use with "OpenMG" on PCs to comply with SDMI (Secure Digital Music Initiative) requirements for copyright management. Both RealNetworks and Sony are active members of SDMI.

RealNetworks also expects to provide integrated support for Sony's ATRAC3 codec technology, which will enable consumers to download and play ATRAC3- encoded music on PCs, as well as downloading such music to Sony's portable audio players packaged with OpenMG, like Memory Stock Walkman and VAIO Music Clip. Initially, RealNetworks and Sony plan to develop a version of RealJukebox for Windows 98 and 2000.

"We are thrilled to enter into such a fundamental relationship with Sony and to provide more than 20 million consumers of RealJukebox with one of the most convenient and flexible means of acquiring, storing and experiencing their music," says Phil Barrett, senior vice president of Media Technologies at RealNetworks. "This collaboration of established industry leaders will significantly accelerate the electronic music distribution revolution."