America Online Acquires Leading Internet Music Brands -- Spinner.com, Winamp and SHOUTcast.DULLES, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 1, 1999-- Acquisitions of Spinner Networks, Inc. and Nullsoft, Inc. To Extend America Online's Leadership By Delivering Next-Generation Music Features on All Brands Spinner.com Broadcasts 2 Million Songs Daily and Nullsoft's Winamp is No. 1-Ranked Branded MP3 Music Player with 5 Million Users To Provide Key Music Capabilities for AOL (A division of Time Warner, Inc., New York, NY, www.aol.com) The world's largest online information service with access to the Internet, e-mail, chat rooms and a variety of databases and services. Anywhere Devices and Broadband Initiatives America Online See AOL. , Inc. (NYSE NYSE See: New York Stock Exchange :AOL), the world leader in branded interactive services, today announced that it has acquired two leaders in Internet music -- Spinner Networks, Inc. and Nullsoft, Inc., developer of the Winamp and SHOUTcast brands. The Company said that these acquisitions will extend its leadership in Internet music both now and into the future by making next-generation music features available to consumers of all its brands, providing a wide range of new audio and other applications and functionality to its partners, and helping to develop key music capabilities for AOL Anywhere devices and broadband initiatives in the future. The Company said it will use the Spinner and Nullsoft technologies and programming to enable consumers to play all leading formats of Internet music. In addition to building the Spinner, Winamp and SHOUTcast brands, America Online will also create custom-branded music services for the AOL, AOL.COM, CompuServe, Netcenter and ICQ ("I Seek You") A conferencing program for the Internet from Mirabilis, Tel Aviv, Israel (www.icq.com). It provides interactive chat, e-mail and file transfer and can alert you when someone on your predefined list has also come online. brands, and offer live and Internet-only radio, sporting and other public events, and downloadable music, along with directory, search, commerce, and community features. Spinner Networks's leading Internet music service, Spinner.com, attracts 1.5 million unique users monthly and strong daytime at-work usage. It broadcasts 2 million songs daily, with user sessions A count of how many times all users access a Web site regardless whether the same person came back several times during the measurement period. If a user leaves and returns within a short time, some systems count those sessions as one. Contrast with unique visitors. See also user session. averaging 91 minutes and totaling 31 million monthly. Spinner.com's content includes over 175,000 songs supplied by over 350 labels, and its music players display song information as music is played, while providing dynamic links that enable real-time listener feedback and instant ordering of the music being played. Nullsoft is the developer of Winamp, the leading branded MP3 player A digital music player that supports the MP3 format, which was the audio format that started a revolution in online music downloads and distribution. All portable music players, the iPod being the most popular, support MP3 along with one or more other audio formats. for Windows, and SHOUTcast, an MP3 streaming audio A one-way audio transmission over a data network. It is widely used on the Web as well as company networks to play audio clips and Internet radio. Computers in home networks stream audio (mostly music) to digital media hubs connected to home theaters. system. With 15 million total downloads, Winamp has an installed base of 5 million users and is the No. 2 most popular application on Download.com after ICQ, averaging more than 43,000 downloads daily. Today, two-thirds of Winamp users are under the age of 26, with one-third based outside of the U.S. The SHOUTcast streaming audio system enables individuals to broadcast their own content over the Internet, key to building communities around music. Bob Pittman, President and Chief Operating Officer Chief Operating Officer (COO) The officer of a firm responsible for day-to-day management, usually the president or an executive vice-president. of AOL, said: "Combining these leading Internet music brands with the audience reach of our brands will lift music online to the next level of popularity. We plan to build downloadable music, Internet radio Listening to audio broadcasts via the Internet. There are more than 4,000 broadcasts available on the Internet that can be streamed and played by a software media player in the computer or in a stand-alone Internet radio with the software built in. and overall music features into each of our brands, as well as customize them for the audience and partners of each of our brands. We especially welcome these companies' strong management, technology and programming teams, who will be key to the development of our next-generation music features for our existing brands, AOL Anywhere devices, and other broadband initiatives." Ted Leonsis, President of AOL Interactive Properties, said: "The innovative Spinner and Nullsoft teams will help us develop new tools to make our partners' music and other audio offerings even more compelling and build the mass market audience. These acquisitions establish our leadership in Internet music, and we expect to extend this leadership through additional partnerships in the future. As faster speeds through broadband emerge, high-quality music will become an increasingly attractive application that will help drive the further growth of broadband. We believe that Internet music will grow new communities and help consumers fully embrace the convenience of buying music online as we move into a more connected society." David Samuel David Samuel is the name of:
Nullsoft Founder and President Justin Frankel Justin Frankel is an American computer programmer best known for his work on the Winamp media player application and for inventing the Gnutella peer-to-peer system. He's also the founder of Cockos Incorporated which creates music production and development software such as the said: "Working with America Online will let us globally extend the use of our technologies through its Internet brands. In addition, having access to America Online's tremendous resources and infrastructure will let focus our efforts on what's really important: Making cool software." The tax-free, stock-for-stock, pooling-of-interests transactions are valued at approximately $400 million. Founded in 1996, Spinner will remain based in San Francisco San Francisco (săn frănsĭs`kō), city (1990 pop. 723,959), coextensive with San Francisco co., W Calif., on the tip of a peninsula between the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay, which are connected by the strait known as the Golden , CA. Nullsoft was founded in 1997 and will move its operations from Sedona, AZ to San Francisco as the two teams merge. About America Online Founded in 1985, America Online, Inc., based in Dulles, Virginia Dulles, Virginia is an unincorporated census-designated place located in Loudoun County, Virginia, part of the Washington Metropolitan Area. The headquarters of AOL, Orbital Sciences Corporation and ODIN technologies and the former headquarters of MCI Inc. are located in Dulles. , is the world's leader in interactive services, Web brands, Internet technologies, and e-commerce services. America Online, Inc. operates: two worldwide Internet services, America Online, with more than 17 million members, and CompuServe, with approximately 2 million members; several leading Internet brands including ICQ, AOL Instant Messenger See AIM. and Digital City, Inc.; the Netscape Netcenter and AOL.COM portals; the Netscape Navigator An earlier Web browser for Windows, Macintosh and X Windows from Netscape that provided secure transmission over the Internet. Soon after its introduction in 1994, Navigator, or just "Netscape," as it was commonly called, quickly became the leading browser on the Web. and Communicator browsers; and AOL MovieFone, the nation's No. 1 movie listing guide and ticketing service. Through its strategic alliance with Sun Microsystems, the Company develops and offers easy-to-deploy, end-to-end e-commerce and enterprise solutions for companies operating in the Net Economy. |
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