LOUD Loudeye

Enterprise Partners, Stensrud and Eibl Craft Winning Digital Strategy NEW YORK, N.Y., and LA JOLLA, Calif., May 1 /PRNewswire/ -- Muze Inc., an Enterprise Partners portfolio company, has acquired the U.S.-based services and operations of Loudeye Corp. (NASDAQ:LOUD), in an asset purchase valued at $11.0 million in cash. Loudeye is a Seattle based developer of business-to-business digital media solutions. The acquisition enables Muze to offer turn-key, fully-hosted music download and subscription-based solutions, as well as a comprehensive 30-second music sampling service, Muze's acquisition of Loudeye caps Enterprise's year-long transformation of Muze into the media industry's most comprehensive "one-stop-shop" for high- quality digital fulfillment. Now Muze can offer retailers a seamless way to acquire licensed digital content, download it to customers' desktop or mobile devices, bill it, and brand it as their own Muze's evolution began a year ago when Enterprise Partners Venture Capital acquired Muze from Metromedia in May 2005. Bill Stensrud, managing director of Enterprise and interim CEO of Muze, along with fellow Enterprise partner Carl Eibl, and a new executive team drawn from Yahoo/MusicMatch, Charter Communications and AMG, have reinvented Muze into a single source for provisioning digital content to Internet stores, wireless carriers and kiosks. Customers include some of the biggest retail brands in the world - BestBuy, Ebay, Buy.com, Virgin Music and Yahoo, along with wireless carriers such as Telfonica/O2. "Muze's comprehensive meta-data for music, books, videos and games is vitally important in today's digital-media environment, and it always was our intent to use it as the platform on which to build a world-class digital fulfillment organization," said Bill Stensrud." Now, with Loudeye's proven digital media service technologies we can offer tremendous retail clout to our world-wide customer base." Carl Eibl added, "Over the past year, we have seen customers - physical retail, internet, mobile carriers, and more - clamoring to set up digital stores where they can deliver their own branded content without the headaches associated with actually acquiring the content, operating the platform, and handling the billing. With this acquisition, Muze is now truly the industry's wholesale marketplace for digital content". Muze was founded in 1991. William Stensrud and Carl Eibl are managing directors of Enterprise Partners and both are members of the board of Muze, with Bill serving as chairman. About Enterprise Partners Venture Capital Enterprise Partners Venture Capital was founded in 1985 and is the largest venture firm headquartered in Southern California, with over $1.1 billion in capital under management. The firm is currently investing its sixth fund and focuses on wireless technologies, life sciences, software and services, semiconductors and digital media. For more information, please visit http://www.epvc.com/ About Muze, Inc. Muze is the leading provider of tools and information used to connect people to art, education, and entertainment. Since 1991, Muze has provided the most comprehensive and accurate entertainment content available. In stores, at home, or on the go, Muze content drives the media experience by providing detailed information about entertainment products, turning browsers into buyers. Nearly 700 companies worldwide rely on Muze's rich entertainment content. Muze provides solutions to a vast array of markets and verticals, ranging from in-store and online retail, portals, community sites, auction sites, and consumer electronics, Clients include Yahoo!, eBay, Tower Records, Best Buy, Overstock, Pricegrabber, Amazon, MSN, RealNetworks, BurnLounge, CNET, Virgin Megastores, Transworld Entertainment, goHastings.com, and many others. Muze is based in New York City, with European offices in London. To learn more about Muze, please visit http://www.muze.com/ and http://www.muzeeurope.com/ DATASOURCE: Enterprise Partners Venture Capital CONTACT: David Z. Orban of Muze, +1-212-824-0349, ; Doug Marshall of MuzeEurope, +44 (0)20 7566 8216, ; Moya Gollaher, Principal, Enterprise Partners Venture Capital, +1-858-731-0244, Web site: http://www.muze.com/ http://www.muzeeurope.com/ http://www.epvc.com/

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