Sonic Foundry Announces Personal Jukebox Software

Los Angeles, CA — Sonic Foundry (AMEX: SFO), a leading developer of media authoring tools for the Windows[R] platform, today announced its development of Boulder, the code name for a software solution which offers secure audio transfer from audio CD and encoding into a compressed format. Boulder is being designed to take advantage of the latest advances in compression technologies found in the Windows Media Technologies 4.0, while addressing the concepts put forth by the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI), a collaboration of the worldwide recording industry.

"Windows Media Technologies 4.0 enables content protection for music distribution over the Internet," said Will Poole, Senior Director of Marketing and Business Development for the Streaming Media Division at Microsoft Corp. "We are very excited Sonic Foundry has chosen to support this new medium, which promises to offer an empowering and creative means of enjoying music on the PC."

"Boulder will utilize the latest compression technologies of Windows Media Technologies 4.0 to offer consumers an even more complete solution for enjoying music on their PC," said Curtis Palmer, CTO of Sonic Foundry. "Most importantly, Boulder will discourage unlawful distribution of music by using the Windows Media Rights Manager. This is a very important step in building confidence among the music community that the Internet can be a profitable new channel for reaching music enthusiasts."

Boulder is a comprehensive software solution for copying, encoding, and managing music on PCs, portable players, virtual jukeboxes, and traditional electronic devices. Being built from the powerful code base of Sonic Foundry's audio CD mastering product, CD Architect, Boulder will offer a friendly user interface which promises to allow consumers to fully enjoy, manage, and interact with their music on their PC. Utilizing the recent technology advances of Windows Media Technologies 4.0, Boulder will allow consumers to transfer their favorite music from audio CDs into a high quality compressed format for use with a wide variety of peripheral playback devices.

Coupled with Sonic Foundry's additional products and technologies, Boulder will help build on an already powerful suite of tools. Windows users are able to employ the Sonic Foundry product line to create music with ACID, edit with Sound Forge, archive to CD with CD Architect, or author for Internet streaming with the newly released Stream Anywhere. The Sonic Foundry suite of software tools provides a complete and professional solution for musicians looking to promote and sell their music on the Internet in a secure manner.