Thorn EMI Plc’s EMI Music Publishing has gone for IBM Corp’s Digital Library as a method of distributing its catalogue electronically, as we suggested it might yesterday. KPM, the EMI division that handles background music favoured in corporate presentations and the like, as opposed to the company’s commercial roster of stars, will use IBM’s kitbag of database, server and network technologies, which IBM grandly describes as a historic turning point in the multimedia revolution, to sell its music to video and film producers. The system has already been used by the Vatican Library, the Indiana University School of Music and DreamWorks SKG. Digitisation of KPM’s 300 hours of music is being done by Richmond, Surrey-based Multimedia Archive & Retrieval Systems Plc, MARS, which has been working with IBM for a year. It hopes to sell the Windows or OS/2 software it has developed to front end the Digital Library to other companies wanting to sell copyrightable material electronically. It is using VisualInfo, a product spun out IBM’s image processing work, to which it has added audio and video digitising technology, to capture the music. The data will be held compressed on Ramac disk array and uncompressed on a 3494 tape library at IBM’s giant service bureau in Warwick. Users can ‘preview’ music, the compressed tracks, then download broadcast quality music from the tape library via the IBM Global Network. The actual server for the system is a 9672 CMOS mainframe running DB2. The Digital Library is another of IBM’s airy-fairy concepts rather than a specific product, but can comprise digitising technology to capture images or sound; storage and management; search and access to with IBM’s textual, image and contextual engines; distribution via IBM’s network or other links; and – the key capability in this case – rights management for content providers. KPM’s rights are protected by limiting end user access to the system: music is downloaded only when a copyright form, detailing what music has been selected and for what purpose, has been completed. MARS has not fixed a price for users but it said that there will be a friendly subscription, and it is pay as you play thereafter.
