SAN DIEGO – Scour.Net positioned itself Wednesday between downloadable music and the people who want it.
The Los Angeles start-up announced a music search guide at the MP3 Summit here Wednesday, making Scour.Net the entryway to several of the Net's major music download sites.
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"[Internet users] can search 99 percent of all the legitimate, reliable downloadable music out there," said Travis Kalanick, vice president of strategy for Scour.Net. "Previously, they had to go to hacked up, separate search engines."
The company has agreements with MP3.com, Launch, EMusic (formerly Goodnoise), and AMP3. The sites represent the bulk of legal downloadable music on the Net, Scour.Net said.
The company's technology trawls over 7 million media files, including video and audio. The search engine produces a list that leads to reliable, fast downloads, the company said. The engine can also perform searches of Net music in general, which can include illegal music.
Scour.Net said it has over a million users of its search and music guide, which categorizes music by genre and sub-genre.
In a related announcement, Scour.Net also staked out key software real estate for its search capability. A Scour.Net search box will appear in the software interfaces of two popular media players, Sonique and MusicMatch's Jukebox 4.0.
The idea of Scour.Net swimming to the middle of the Internet music stream impressed The Yucaipa Companies, which is run by the former head of Disney, Michael Ovitz. The company took a controlling interest in Scour.Net last week. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Yucaipa, which has been gobbling up Internet technology companies to the tune of US$30 billion, touts Scour.Net as a hub for new media access, well positioned as consumers move to faster, broadband Internet access.
"A large portion of Scour's user base comes from At Home, which clearly shows that Scour's users are embracing the broadband movement and using Scour for their online access to digital media," said Richard Wolpert, head of Internet and technology ventures for Yucaipa.
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