Sony Corp is to create a series of digital music playback devices that will support IBM Corp’s Electronic Music Management System (EMMS), the companies announced late Thursday. The deal rounded-off a week that saw industry heavyweights and lightweights issuing a battery of conflicting statements about secure music delivery.
Sony’s music arm is already supporting the EMMS trial IBM plans to run this summer, and announced its own secure digital music technology, MagicGate, in March. Under the IBM deal, Sony will manufacture digital playback gadgets that run EMMS, and both firms will investigate ways to combine their technologies.
Last week the battle to supplant MP3, the de facto standard compression format for distributing digital music, began to heat up. On Monday, streaming media software firm RealNetworks Inc also signed up to EMMS, before acquiring MP3 firm Xing Technologies Inc on Tuesday. Not to be upstaged, later the same day Microsoft Corp launched its MS Audio 4.0 software, with MP3-equivalent sound and software copyright protection, with support from the IT, if not the music, industry.
