CDDB Marks Expansion With New West Coast Headquarters.

BERKELEY, Calif.--(ENTERTAINMENT WIRE)--April 29, 1999--

CDDB, home of the world's largest online CD music database and the market leader in disc recognition technology, Thursday opened its West Coast headquarters at 2141 Fourth Street, Berkeley.

"Our new headquarters facility in Northern California enhances our company's capabilities in the Internet and music technology space and makes us better able to take advantage of the enormous pool of talent here in Silicon Valley," said Jim Kinney, general manager.

CDDB's attraction to the East Bay was based upon its central location at the foot of the San Francisco Bay Bridge, which is quickly becoming the Bay Area's mecca for digital entertainment, hosting a number of notable independent film and special effects companies.

Ty Roberts, CDDB's chief technology officer and an early pioneer in the creation of multimedia Enhanced CDs, agreed that the Berkeley headquarters will enable CDDB to better compete as a major hub for the development of Internet music information services and related music technology.

"We're excited to be opening an office in this edgy and vibrant industrial area that is now home for a number of new media and Internet companies," Roberts said. "The area symbolizes the excitement of merging of old and new -- exactly what is also going on with the music industry merging with the vast capabilities of the Internet."

CDDB, grassroots Internet darling, is user built and supported and access to the service is provided free of charge to developers and end users. CDDB's Disc Recognition Service is built into more than 200 music software players.

The largest selection of these CDDB-enabled players can be downloaded from www.CDDB.com. Users flock to the Web site millions of times monthly to find information on both rare CDs as well as their standby favorites. The Database today houses more than 360,000 titles and is projected to have more than half a million titles by year's end.

CDDB is recognized as the No. 1 source of music CD information on the Internet and the company's Disc Recognition Service is widely regarded as the best service of its kind in the world. CDDB Inc. is an Internet enterprise of Escient Inc. (www.escient.com), a recognized pioneer and leader in developing convergence technologies that combine consumer electronics, computing power, and the Internet in powerful yet simple ways.