Muze Acquisition Creates One-Stop Shop for Provisioning All Media on All Devices
May 01 2006 - 8:05AM
PR Newswire (US)
Enterprise Partners, Stensrud and Eibl Craft Winning Digital
Strategy NEW YORK, N.Y., and LA JOLLA, Calif., May 1 /PRNewswire/
-- Muze Inc., an Enterprise Partners portfolio company, has
acquired the U.S.-based services and operations of Loudeye Corp.
(NASDAQ:LOUD), in an asset purchase valued at $11.0 million in
cash. Loudeye is a Seattle based developer of business-to-business
digital media solutions. The acquisition enables Muze to offer
turn-key, fully-hosted music download and subscription-based
solutions, as well as a comprehensive 30-second music sampling
service, Muze's acquisition of Loudeye caps Enterprise's year-long
transformation of Muze into the media industry's most comprehensive
"one-stop-shop" for high- quality digital fulfillment. Now Muze can
offer retailers a seamless way to acquire licensed digital content,
download it to customers' desktop or mobile devices, bill it, and
brand it as their own Muze's evolution began a year ago when
Enterprise Partners Venture Capital acquired Muze from Metromedia
in May 2005. Bill Stensrud, managing director of Enterprise and
interim CEO of Muze, along with fellow Enterprise partner Carl
Eibl, and a new executive team drawn from Yahoo/MusicMatch, Charter
Communications and AMG, have reinvented Muze into a single source
for provisioning digital content to Internet stores, wireless
carriers and kiosks. Customers include some of the biggest retail
brands in the world - BestBuy, Ebay, Buy.com, Virgin Music and
Yahoo, along with wireless carriers such as Telfonica/O2. "Muze's
comprehensive meta-data for music, books, videos and games is
vitally important in today's digital-media environment, and it
always was our intent to use it as the platform on which to build a
world-class digital fulfillment organization," said Bill Stensrud."
Now, with Loudeye's proven digital media service technologies we
can offer tremendous retail clout to our world-wide customer base."
Carl Eibl added, "Over the past year, we have seen customers -
physical retail, internet, mobile carriers, and more - clamoring to
set up digital stores where they can deliver their own branded
content without the headaches associated with actually acquiring
the content, operating the platform, and handling the billing. With
this acquisition, Muze is now truly the industry's wholesale
marketplace for digital content". Muze was founded in 1991. William
Stensrud and Carl Eibl are managing directors of Enterprise
Partners and both are members of the board of Muze, with Bill
serving as chairman. About Enterprise Partners Venture Capital
Enterprise Partners Venture Capital was founded in 1985 and is the
largest venture firm headquartered in Southern California, with
over $1.1 billion in capital under management. The firm is
currently investing its sixth fund and focuses on wireless
technologies, life sciences, software and services, semiconductors
and digital media. For more information, please visit
http://www.epvc.com/ About Muze, Inc. Muze is the leading provider
of tools and information used to connect people to art, education,
and entertainment. Since 1991, Muze has provided the most
comprehensive and accurate entertainment content available. In
stores, at home, or on the go, Muze content drives the media
experience by providing detailed information about entertainment
products, turning browsers into buyers. Nearly 700 companies
worldwide rely on Muze's rich entertainment content. Muze provides
solutions to a vast array of markets and verticals, ranging from
in-store and online retail, portals, community sites, auction
sites, and consumer electronics, Clients include Yahoo!, eBay,
Tower Records, Best Buy, Overstock, Pricegrabber, Amazon, MSN,
RealNetworks, BurnLounge, CNET, Virgin Megastores, Transworld
Entertainment, goHastings.com, and many others. Muze is based in
New York City, with European offices in London. To learn more about
Muze, please visit http://www.muze.com/ and
http://www.muzeeurope.com/ DATASOURCE: Enterprise Partners Venture
Capital CONTACT: David Z. Orban of Muze, +1-212-824-0349, ; Doug
Marshall of MuzeEurope, +44 (0)20 7566 8216, ; Moya Gollaher,
Principal, Enterprise Partners Venture Capital, +1-858-731-0244,
Web site: http://www.muze.com/ http://www.muzeeurope.com/
http://www.epvc.com/
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