The Orchard Announces Four New Mobile Partners
World's Leading Distributor and Marketer of Digital Music Inks Deals With GroupieTunes, Mobiletoolbox, Summus and Xingtone
NEW YORK, NY - January 18, 2006 - The Orchard, the world's leading distributor and marketer of independent music, today announced new partnerships with mobile companies GroupieTunes, Mobiletoolbox, Summus, Inc. (OTCBB: SMMU), and Xingtone. Each mobile company has committed to make every Orchard ringtone available to their respective customer bases.
"These new partnerships further extend The Orchard's industry-leading mobile reach," said Greg Scholl, chief executive of The Orchard and managing director of Dimensional Associates, the company that owns The Orchard, eMusic and Dimensional Music Publishing. "Coming on the heels of our full-song-download-over-mobile deals with Verizon Wireless and Groove Mobile, which we announced earlier this month, we are committed to maintaining our leadership position with respect to mobile music distribution and marketing."
As part of the partnerships, The Orchard has agreed to actively assist each company in promoting, highlighting and merchandising independent music from around the globe.
The Orchard already has secured guaranteed promo placements with Summus, Groupie Tunes and Data Corp - establishing contractually that between 15 percent to 50 percent of all non-major label placements will be sourced from Orchard labels and artists. The Orchard's partnership with Xingtone also will allow Orchard artists and labels to offer ringtones directly to their fans through unique ringtone stores.
The Orchard manages a growing catalogue of more than 700,000 tracks, which it markets and distributes to all of the world's leading digital music stores, including eMusic, iTunes, Napster, MSN, Yahoo!/MusicMatch, and Real/Rhapsody. The Orchard also distributes tens of thousands of ringtones to the leading global mobile companies, maintaining the largest mobile network of any music distributor, spanning over 200 global services, including Sprint, Vodafone, T-Mobile, Zingy, 9 Squared, Securycast, Arvato Mobile and Hudson Soft.
The Orchard's catalogue includes a diverse roster of music: landmark indie rock and punk from SST (Black Flag, Minutemen) and Lookout! Records (The Donnas, Ted Leo), classic hip-hop from Delicious Vinyl (Tone Loc, Young MC) and Nature Sounds (MF Doom, Immortal Technique), world-renowned classical music from Analekta and Qualiton, Bollywood hits from Saregama (Asha Bhosle, Lata Mangeshkar) and other top Indian labels, and much more. The Orchard catalogue also includes music from multi-platinum acts such as Green Day, Coldplay and Ray Charles from their early years, before they were signed to major labels, and breaking bands like The Hold Steady and Matisyahu. Overall, The Orchard's catalogue encompasses music from thousands of record labels spanning 73 countries and every music genre.
About The Orchard
The Orchard is the leading distributor and marketer of independent music in the world, representing thousands of labels spanning 73 countries and every music genre. The Orchard supplies its catalogue of more than 700,000 tracks to all of the leading legal digital music retailers and mobile operators throughout the world. The company is headquartered in New York and London, with operations in Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Tel Aviv, Hong Kong, Toronto, Kolkata, Johannesburg, Moscow and Melbourne, and local representatives in Paris, Milan, Berlin, Barcelona, Lausanne, Ramallah and Nairobi.
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The Orchard Announces Four New Mobile Partners
PARTNER BACKGROUND
GroupieTunes
GroupieTunes was the first provider of mobile content and sales services for independent and unsigned artists that features direct payment through customers' cellular billing. Established in 2004, GroupieTunes allows anyone to post and sell their content to mobile devices. With its 2.0 launch coming at the end of January, GroupieTunes will be the most innovative mobile platform in the music industry with over a million songs in its catalog making it the largest aggregator of independent and unsigned mobile content in the United States.
Mobiletoolbox
Mobiletoolbox delivers all of the necessary components to enable clients to take full advantage of the rapidly growing world of m-commerce. All of the key elements are made available including content preparation, delivery, premium billing and an every growing library of popular content. With alliances with all the major music publishers as well as key industry content providers such as The Orchard, Mobiletoolbox makes it easy to succeed. Having relationships with more than 400 mobile carriers world wide and access to the latest music for selling ringtones and all other forms of mobile media enables clients to be on the cutting edge of mobile communications.
Summus
Summus is a leading provider of mobile media applications that optimize the consumer wireless experience. Summus partners with leading content brands to develop compelling and unique wireless applications and content for the mobile phone, focused within the most popular areas of growth, including photo-messaging, multi-player games, news/information and personalization. Summus currently offers an ever-growing list of 34 mobile phone applications deployed through 45 major wireless carriers or distribution partners in the U.S. and abroad. Summus designs and develops these applications with the industry's most intuitive navigation that is designed for a consistently superior user experience. For more information, see www.summus.com.
Xingtone
Based in Los Angeles, Xingtone brings mobile content, including music, images and videos, to wireless devices at the click of a button. The world's first wireless carrier-agnostic application, Xingtone's software is compatible with all open networks, including Sprint PCS, Cingular, AT&T Wireless, and T-Mobile, while supporting more than 100 handsets, among the most in the industry. The company's first product, Xingtone Ringtone Maker is the only legal, over-the-air (OTA) software application that allows users to easily create unlimited and personalised real music ringtones from their personal music library for mobile phones. The product is distributed via www.xingtone.com and will soon be available at numerous retail locations throughout North America.
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