AfterDawn: News

Liquid Audio sells its patents to Microsoft

One of the oldest digital music companies still around, Liquid Audio, has been in serious financial problems over the last year or so and company has been seen as a very probable Chapter 11 candidate for some time now. Today Liquid Audio announced that it sold its DRM and secure file-transaction patents to Microsoft for $7 million in cash.

Now Liquid Audio says that once the deal is finished, it will focus on selling and licensing its existing digital distribution technology to content providers and online retailers. Company has also voted about merger with Alliance Entertainment and vote's results should be ready by Friday. Liquid Audio has operated since 1996 and has developed secure online music distribution tools, payment methods, etc which never really took off because of various things, including major record labels' unattractive licensing policies and P2P networks.

Written by: Petteri Pyyny @ 30 Sep 2002 16:16

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• 4 comments

• A_Klingon

  Funny you should mention Liquid Audio.
  
  A serious flaw I've noticed from time to time, is the unsolicited inclusion of unwanted software which many companies bundle with their own products. [for profit of course] Microsoft, certainly, is notorious for this.
  
  But another prime offender is Adaptec. (Now 'Roxio') The cdrom which came with my first (now dead) cd burner includes 'Easy CD Creator & Direct CD, but it *also* mandatorily installs an outdated Liquid Audio player, a crummy device with crummy sound, for crummy L.A. files which are hard to find (thank god, who needs 'em?) whether I like it or not.
  
  This necessitates the manual UN-installing of the damned thing every time I use the cdrom.
  
  It's an evil practice that should be banned.
  
  -- Mike --
  

  30.9.2002 21:33 #1

• MrFat

  Glad i wasn't the only one that noticed that freakin' problem. Only to feel vindicated i transfered the program to a cd-r, then destoyed it! Whew! It was like a cigarette after sex! And i don't even smoke!.....cigarettes!
  
  Mommy! What's sex?

  30.9.2002 21:45 #2

• seanbyrne

  I had a Liquid Audio player on my PC many years back. It didn't last very long on the system and I never got hold of an audio track. Now, it's like the old 8-track system.
  
  EasyCD Creator came with my last Samsung 8x8x32 CD-writer. It didn't have any Liquid Audio software with it. I later changed to Nero and have been using it ever since ;-)

  1.10.2002 04:52 #3

• A_Klingon

  Mr. Fat - hello again !! (second post tonight!) <the other was about Napster, sniff> :-)
  
  Just wondering.....why bother even transferring that god-awful clunker (Liquid Audio) to cdr? No wonder they're bankrupt. Only some godawful DRM (Digital Rights' Management)- Obsessive conglomerate like Microsoft, would fork over 7 million bucks for their doomed DRM security system!
  
  I downloaded a total of (I think), *three* Liquid Squiggly Audio tunes, which were heavily guarded in nature, and sucked in musical quality. Eight-track cartridges were, in comparison, a *much* better value methinks. (Mr. William Gates, I think, has FAR too much spare time and $$$ on his hands).
  
  Seanbyrne: (Hi!). I guess even Adaptec decided to smarten up and dumped the Liquid Audio Dinosaur. I don't much like Nero, ('cause I'm nuts, I guess), but if I have to, I can buck the morally-conscious crowd, and get a fully-cracked Nero install, off of Grokster via "KeyGen" (Key Generator).
  
  I'm sorry, but....
  
  a) I'm very very poor
  b) I'm morally corrupt
  c) I'm outta here ....
  
  -- Mike --
  
  

  1.10.2002 23:55 #4