BMI Launches Watermarking Field Trials; Latest Push in New Technologies Strategy.

NEW YORK--(ENTERTAINMENT WIRE)--Feb. 10, 1999--BMI, the performing rights organization, today announced that it is launching a field trial with leading watermarking technology companies in an effort to test the technology's ability to identity BMI represented works when they are performed over the air, on cable, and online.

Leading watermarking companies including ARIS Technologies, Inc., Blue Spike, Inc., Cognicity, Inc., and Liquid Audio, Inc., are all slated to participate.

The trial will identify musical performances taking place over traditional television, radio, and cable outlets, as well as on the Internet. It is part of a company wide commitment to integrate new technologies and digital copyright management into the organization's licensing, operations and distribution systems.

"The Watermarking Trials are another initiative BMI has undertaken to put new technology to work for our writers and our licensees," said BMI President & CEO Frances W. Preston. "Over the past two years, BMI has launched MusicBot(TM), our Internet music search and database tool, and also upgraded our distribution system to embrace the digital world."

BMI was the first music rights organization to sign an agreement for the performance of music on the Internet and one of the first entertainment companies to create a site on the web in 1994. Since then, the organization has offered downloadable licenses over the Internet and created an online music use reporting system which electronically processes licensee's music use information over the web. BMI is using the information collected through its online system to distribute royalties to its affiliates based on performances of BMI music on the Internet.

As part of the trial, BMI will digitally encode watermarks into specific pieces of music and attempt to detect the watermarks through a network of electronic monitoring stations that will be set up in major markets across the country. The trials will provide BMI with practical experience in encoding and decoding watermarks and downloading and integrating the data into BMI's music performance tracking system. The test is scheduled to begin this month.

The information detected through the BMI Watermarking Field Trials will be analyzed to determine the accuracy and robustness of the various watermarking technologies. Additionally, BMI will evaluate the practical issues encountered in the use of watermarks for the identification of musical performances including the integration of these capabilities into BMI's current performance monitoring system.

BMI operates on a not-for-profit making basis, representing the public performance copyright interest of more than 140,000 songwriters and composers and 60,000 music publishers, with a repertoire of more than 3 million musical works.