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Sony Music to Expand Content Services for Mobile Clients And The Digital Home Using Intel(R)-Based Enterprise Solutions

Posted on: Tuesday, 9 December 2003, 06:00 CST

NEW YORK, Dec. 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Sony Music Entertainment announced today that it has signed a collaboration agreement with Intel Corporation that will expand Sony Music's commercial content encoding and delivery system. This agreement will provide a wider variety of digital content to media consumers through improved systems that support digital media service providers.

To serve its growing service provider customer base, the Sony Music Digital Services Group purchased Intel(R)-based servers to ensure their upstream media management system has the processing power and scalability to support a quickly ramping business.

The two companies will also collaborate on grid computing research that could lead to the expansion of Sony Music's encoding solution which uses the untapped processing power of PCs and laptops in Sony's enterprise during particularly demanding encoding jobs. Sony Music will also look at enhancing the current system's scalability with cluster technology and Intel Itanium(R) 2 processor-based systems for 64 bit applications. Intel and Sony Music plan to develop a Solutions Blueprint for fault-tolerant service delivery platforms that will enable service providers to quickly deploy new content services for premium content with flexible licensing and user-friendly applications.

Sony Music Digital Services Group is a premier service provider of Digital Asset Management and content distribution services. Digital Services Group routinely provides hundreds of thousands of digital media files on a daily basis to consumer services worldwide, servicing a variety of users for clients ranging from mobile carriers and digital download services to manufacturing plants. Sony's solution offers storage, management and delivery of high resolution print-ready graphics, professional audio, and HD broadcast quality video assets. Digital Services Group services meet the needs of media companies by providing both long-term archival solutions as well as high-volume mission critical digital distribution services in consumer-ready formats.

As part of the agreement, Sony Music purchased 3.20 GHz Intel(R) Xeon(TM) processor blade servers to build up their Digital Asset Management system, which will enable service providers to quickly gain access to the latest digital content, such as ringtone master clips, games, music and video, for distribution to their subscribers.

"Since 1999, we've been securely managing the rights, royalties, services and content for hundreds of thousands of song tracks," said Matt Carpenter, Vice President, Technology and Music Production, Sony Music Entertainment. "To integrate video clips, ringtones and games in our service, we specified the Intel-based blade servers because of their unmatched processing power and small form factor. The Digital Services Group processes media files in every popular format; Microsoft* Windows*, RealNetworks*, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4, AAC, and others, from the lowest acceptable cell phone resolution to high-definition video files. We needed the flexibility and power the Intel processors provide."

"This agreement demonstrates that Intel-based servers in modular configurations meet the mission-critical specification that Sony Music has set for its line-of-business systems," said Mike Fister, Senior Vice President, Intel Corporation. "Intel is pleased to have been selected as a key collaborator for this vital project."

About Sony Music Entertainment Inc.

Sony Music Entertainment Inc. (SME) is a leading global music company that produces, manufactures, distributes and markets recorded music and entertainment in a wide range of formats, including video, CD, DVD, MD, SACD and via the Internet. The company comprises three divisions: Sony Music (domestic U.S.); Sony Music International (all countries outside of the U.S. and Japan); and Sony Classical (worldwide classical music division).

Intel, Xeon and Itanium are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries.

* Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.

Sony Music Entertainment Inc.

CONTACT: Keith McCarthy of Sony Music Entertainment, +1-212-833-5047, orkeith_mccarthy@sonymusic.com

Web site: http://www.sony.com/

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