Major Digital Music Players to Adopt DDEX Standards


NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwire - December 1, 2010) - Digital Data Exchange ("DDEX"), a consortium of leading media companies, music licensing organizations and digital service providers focused on creating digital supply chain data standards for common use, today announced that several digital music retailers, labels and other rights owners have made strategic commitments to begin using the DDEX content and metadata messaging specification as part of their digital music supply chain infrastructure.

In all, eighteen companies have announced plans to adopt the DDEX standards as a strategic measure, including EMI Music, The Harry Fox Agency (HFA), Nokia, The Orchard, PPL (Phonographic Performance Limited), PRS for Music, Rhapsody™ International, RightsFlow, Sociedad General de Autores y Editores (SGAE), Société Civile des Producteurs Phonographiques (SCPP), Société des Auteurs, Compositeurs et Editeurs de Musique (SACEM), Sony DADC Digital Services, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group.

These organizations will be the first to extensively deploy DDEX standards commercially, leading to reduced costs and improved efficiency in communicating data and content with business partners in the supply chain. In addition, there are dozens of companies embarking on initial implementations of the standards, with DDEX having issued nearly 200 implementation licences in the last twelve months.

"DDEX has now come of age," Kirit Joshi, Chair of the DDEX Board, said. "Over the last year, our membership has grown significantly, there is considerably more engagement on the critical details of standards development, and companies across the music industry have made important steps to standardize the full scope of their digital supply chain by incorporating DDEX specifications into their operations. Implementations are the key to DDEX's success and we look forward to further growing the number of companies adopting its standards."

Maikki Fisk, Senior Manager, 3rd Party Licensing and Relationships, Nokia, said: "We have been a supporter of DDEX from the beginning and that support is now paying dividends as more and more of our partners look to implement DDEX, and feel the benefits of reducing the need for proprietary formats for the communication of digital music data." Similarly, Lou Trebino, SVP & CIO of The Harry Fox Agency and DDEX Board Member and Treasurer, said, "HFA is proud to be one of the first implementers of DDEX and continues to recognize its strategic value and support its growing adoption in the digital music marketplace."

"Sony Music is excited to announce plans to support DDEX," said Dennis Kooker, Executive Vice President, Operations, and General Manager, Global Digital Business and US Sales, Sony Music Entertainment. "We think our move to this industry standard will better position our company to meet both the current and future digital business needs of our partners and provide them with improved service."

The most significant benefit to using DDEX across the whole supply chain is the reduction in data communication costs. Christopher Read, Vice President, Global Product Data Management and Digital Operations, Warner Music Group, said, "Adoption of the DDEX standards within our digital supply chain has already helped make our communications and activities with other DDEX members more efficient. We look forward to further rolling out these changes as more partners join the DDEX initiative." Brad Kovacs of Rhapsody International makes a similar point: "The cost savings we have already seen from implementing DDEX allows Rhapsody to direct more resources to provide a better service for consumers, rather than in support of back office functions, which in turn we expect to result in greater revenue opportunities for everyone in the digital music supply chain."

To facilitate increased engagement with the worldwide music industry, DDEX is proud to announce that it is sponsoring MidemNet and the MidemNet Academy at Midem in January 2011.

DDEX has been developing standards for the communication of metadata between various players in the digital music supply chain since 2006. This work has recently extended to the development of standards for communication of the digital music content as well. At the beginning of October, DDEX published four new standards that encompassed this activity. More information about these and the specifications themselves can be found at http://www.ddex.net/documents.html.

About DDEX:
DDEX was set up to develop and encourage the adoption of standard XML message formats to improve the current exchange of data between companies operating in the digital media content supply chain. The standards enable the identification of the information required to provide digital media content to the consumer and report sales back to the content owning companies, as well as common ways for this data to be exchanged between companies. The world's leading companies and organizations involved in the digital music supply chain formed DDEX in 2006. Initially DDEX has therefore focused on the digital music supply chain, but DDEX is now encouraging membership from stakeholders in any media sectors that overlap with music.

The Charter Members of the organization are Apple Inc., American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), Harry Fox Agency Inc. (HFA), Microgen Aptitude Limited, Nokia, Orange, The Orchard, PPL (Phonographic Performance Limited), PRS for Music, Société Civile des Producteurs Phonographiques (SCPP), Société des Auteurs, Compositeurs et Editeurs de Musique (SACEM), Sociedad General de Autores y Editores (SGAE), Sony Music Entertainment, Telefónica Servicos de Música S.A.U., Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group.

Membership of DDEX is open to any organization with a business interest in the digital media content supply chain.

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