Sonic Foundry Signs Agreement with Hewlett-Packard to Provide Music Jukebox Software for Personal Computers

Sonic Foundry, Inc. (Nasdaq: SOFO) today announced it has signed a licensing agreement with Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE: HWP) (HP) to package a customized version of its recently developed Music Jukebox software for managing and recording music on the PC with the HP CD-Writer Music, a CD-Rewritable (CD-RW) drive that HP is announcing today. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

"Our partnering with HP, the market leader in CD-RW drives, demonstrates the growing visibility of our new Music Jukebox software, Sonic Foundry SIREN[TM], in the burgeoning digital music management arena," said Rimas Buinevicius, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Sonic Foundry. "Including a customized version of our software with HP's CD-Rewritable drive products greatly broadens our consumer base and provides PC users access to the full breadth of digital music technology available today."

George Prokop, HP Product Manager, said, "Packaging Sonic Foundry's Music Jukebox software with HP's new CD-RW drive will give consumers a powerful way to download, copy and manage music files. This solution offers consumers a comprehensive music jukebox solution that allows them to create studio-quality music CDs. HP is very excited about this agreement with Sonic Foundry."

SIREN is a complete digital music management system that allows PC users to locate and download digital music from the Internet, record music from their personal CD collection to their
PC hard drive, and manage the music in multiple playlist arrangements on their PCs. SIREN utilizes Microsoft[R] Windows Media[TM] Audio (WMA)'s digital compression technologies, offering superior audio quality and faster compression, and requiring less storage space than alternative technologies. Employing the code base of Sonic Foundry's audio CD recording product, CD Architect[TM], SIREN features fully integrated audio CD recording, allowing users to create and record custom compilations of their favorite hits and "burn" them to CDs from within the jukebox application.

HP's CD-RW drives will burn music only onto CD-R audio media, which are fully licensed and approved by the recording industry and expected to be the only media compatible with future electronic playback devices. The HP CD-Writer Music packaged with Music JukeBox, a customized version of Sonic Foundry's SIREN, is expected to be available on September 1, 1999, in the U.S. at Circuit City and Best Buy stores.

SIREN is currently available for download as a beta at www.sonicfoundry.com.