Nokia to Acquire Loudeye, Enter Digital Media Distribution

Nokia agreed to acquire Loudeye, a provider of digital music platforms and digital media distribution services, for approximately US$60 million.

Loudeye aggregates rights and content from all the major labels and hundreds of independents and currently offers licensed catalog and complete media for over 1.6 million tracks. The company delivers 60 live services in over 20 countries and multiple languages across Europe and South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.

“Music is a key experience for Nokia and Nokia Nseries multimedia computers and we want to be able to offer the best fully integrated mobile music experience to our customers. Loudeye brings a number of key assets to Nokia, including a great team of people, a substantial content catalogue and a robust service platform that will help us to achieve this objective,” said Anssi Vanjoki, executive vice president and general manager, Multimedia, Nokia. “People should be able to access all the music they want, anywhere, anytime and at a reasonable cost. With this acquisition, we aim to deliver that vision and a comprehensive music experience to Nokia device owners during 2007.”http://www.nokia.comhttp://www.loudeye.com

• Loudeye is headquartered in Seattle, with offices in London and Bristol UK, Paris France, Cologne Germany and Milan Italy. It employs approximately 130 people with reported revenue in 2005 of approximately $20.3 million, excluding discontinued operations.