Article Excerpt:
TWST: Would you begin with a brief description of MediaBay?Mr. Dittus: MediaBay is a digital media company. We are a syndicator and marketer of spoken word audio, which primarily consists of audio books, as well as classic radio shows. We have the only archive of American radio in the United States. It's 50,000 hours in size and it contains every significant radio program through the mid-1950s. On the audio book side, we represent every major publishing company. We have thousands of titles ' from New York Times bestsellers to learning courses to educational material for professionals. It's an enormous breadth of audio work. We distribute digitally. We are a private label provider of an audio download service. You can listen to our content on MP3 players or cell phones. We currently do business with MSN, where we are the exclusive provider of audio books. We also have a distribution agreement with Real Networks. We also provide content to MusicNet and their audio stores. Their partners include Yahoo, AOL and the new MTV URGE service that will be launched by the end of this year. So, essentially, we are fast becoming one of the larger providers of downloadable audio books to the music services in the United States.
TWST: Give us an idea of what the various components are in that
delivery system, and what you actually provide.
Mr. Dittus: We are a content aggregator. That means we first identify
the content. We then license it and digitize it, which makes it
available for digital download. We prepare the meta data, which
essentially determines how it's going to look on either your PC or your
handheld device. Our distribution strategy is to provide a white label
download store to mobile operators and Web retailers, focusing on big
brands with large audiences and customer bases. A big brand can put
their name on the download storefront and quickly get into the download
business. Our private label platform is something that we have developed
over the last year. It is just beginning to take off.
Tickers included in this excerpt: MBAY
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