New Appliance Allows 'Beaming' of Music to Computers, Home Stereos, PDAs, and
Music Stores and Personal Devices Including iTunes and iPod
SAN DIEGO, Feb. 24 /PRNewswire/ -- MP3tunes, a new San Diego-based music
company, today introduced a new music appliance called MP3beamer, which
organizes an entire music collection in one convenient location and then makes
the music accessible from almost any device or location. Users can quickly
store their CD collection and MP3 libraries and then organize the music and
construct custom playlists. Once stored to MP3beamer, the music is
universally accessible from computers, home stereos, PDAs, and portable
devices including iTunes software and iPod players via iTunes. MP3beamer is
available for immediate purchase in a $399 hardware version or a $69.95
software version at http://www.mp3beamer.com.
"The MP3beamer is the jukebox in the sky, but it lives in your computer
room," said Michael Robertson, CEO of MP3tunes. "It acts like your own
personal digital music recorder [DMR]. Just as a digital video recorder
stores video and allows you to play it back on TVs, a DMR lets you add a music
track or album to MP3beamer and immediately have it available on your home
stereo, iTunes, PDA or portable device -- virtually any device with speakers
or a headphone jack."
MP3beamer makes it easy to combine computer files and CDs into an
organized library. CDs can be added by simply inserting them into the CD-ROM
drive without additional user interaction. It takes three to four minutes to
rip a CD, including automatic detection of artist, album and track titles.
Tracks are recorded in MP3 format at high-quality 192kbps. Once it is
completed saving, the CD is auto-ejected, making the MP3beamer ready to rip
another CD. Individual MP3s can be copied to MP3beamer over the Internet or
be transported via USB devices for import into a music library. Tracks
purchased from online music retailers such as MP3tunes and emusic can also be
loaded into MP3beamer. Once music is stored, songs can be sorted by genre,
artist, and album, and users can construct their own personalized playlists.
A wide range of software, hardware and music devices can connect to
MP3beamer with each playing different songs simultaneously. Users of the
popular music manager iTunes can stream music from MP3beamer on both Microsoft
Windows XP and Macintosh OS X computers by simply clicking on "MP3beamer" in
the left-hand column. MP3beamer also supports a powerful Web and Java
interface, so virtually any Internet-connected device can connect and play
music.
MP3beamer has several options for offline or remote music playback. For
Microsoft Windows users, MP3beamer comes with MP3beamer Sync, a unique program
that can be used to sync music on MP3beamer to laptop or desktop computers -
making playback possible without an Internet connection. The Sync software
also enables iPod syncing via iTunes. Linux users can take advantage of
Lsongs music manager for streaming access to music as well syncing
capabilities. Wireless access to MP3beamer is possible using WinCE and
Palm-based PDAs. For more information about how to use different devices and
operating systems with MP3beamer, please visit http://www.mp3beamer.com.
MP3beamer can also play music in every room of the house over a WiFi or
wired network using a low-cost media receiver. These wireless devices connect
to MP3beamer without any special configuration, making it easy to connect to
an existing home stereo, entertainment center, or wireless boom box in any
room of the home or even outside. Each device can operate independently, and
users can select, play, pause, fast-forward, rewind, and mute different
musical selections simultaneously using the remote control that is included
with the receiver. MP3beamer supports more then a dozen popular media
receivers, but Linksys or SMC units are recommended. For information on
recommended receivers, go to http://www.mp3beamer.com.
MP3beamer uses the latest Linspire operating system (included with
purchase of MP3beamer) and uses Lsongs as the music manager program to add
music. This software handles all aspects of music collection, including
importing existing music files and automated ripping of CDs. MP3beamer,
Lsongs and MP3beamer Sync are all installed via Linspire's CNR Warehouse with
one click and can be updated in a similar fashion.
MP3beamer can be purchased in two different ways. For $399, customers can
purchase a powerful, sleek MP3beamer machine that is one third the size of a
traditional PC and able to store approximately 1,400 CDs. For $69.95, users
can purchase a software-only version of MP3beamer that can be installed on
most modern PCs, turning the computer into a dedicated music machine. Orders
for MP3beamer can be placed online at http://www.mp3beamer.com for immediate
fulfillment.
For more information, please contact:
Heather MacKenzie
Public Relations
858.587.6700 x 263
pr@mp3tunes.com
About MP3tunes
MP3tunes (http://www.mp3tunes.com) was founded in 2005, three years after
Robertson stepped down as the CEO of MP3.com. San Diego-based MP3.com was
founded in 1997 and grew to nearly 300 employees, becoming the largest digital
music site on the Web, with more than 1,000,000 songs from 250,000 artists and
hundreds of thousands of unique daily visitors. Vivendi Universal purchased
the profitable company in 2001 for $372 million in stock and cash.
MP3tunes is the third venture for Robertson since he sold MP3.com.
In 2001, Robertson founded Linspire, Inc. (http://www.linspire.com), a company
that produces the Linspire desktop Linux operating system, which has been
gaining market share from the popular Microsoft Windows. In 2003, he founded
SIPphone, Inc. (http://www.sipphone.com), a VoIP technology company that competes
with traditional phone systems.
MP3beamer is a trademark of MP3tunes. Other marks used herein may be the
property of their respective owners.
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