BMI and mobZilla Announce Licensing Agreement for Mobile/PC Streaming Music Service

Posted in News on March 3, 2005

BMI and La Jolla, CA-based wireless media company mobZilla, LLC, today announced an agreement covering the performing rights for BMI musical works for mobZilla's mobile phone streaming music service. MobZilla also announced their first major U.S. launch of streaming music to cell phones and other wireless mobile devices.

MobZilla is a monthly subscription service that gives users unlimited access to streaming commercial-free music both online and on select mobile phones across most major U.S. carriers. MobZilla subscribers nationwide can listen to a mix of music personalized from over 30 content genres through their mobile phone or on the Internet. Through its licensing agreement with BMI, mobZilla is able to legally stream more than approximately 4.5 million works that are represented by BMI.

MobZilla will be showcasing its service at CTIA Wireless 2005 in New Orleans in March, giving carriers, handset manufacturers and mobile brands an opportunity to demo the service, which is being offered at a price-point of less than $5 per month.

"MobZilla represents the next frontier in mobile music: bringing streaming FM radio quality music programming to the phone," said BMI's Richard Conlon, Vice President, Business Development and Marketing, Media Licensing. "Consumers are increasingly adopting their mobile phone or device to listen to music, watch streaming video as well as download games. Listening to music on your mobile device clearly and seamlessly is a logical next step and will help to expand the market for mobile entertainment. This is a great opportunity to reach listeners through a new medium while creating a new revenue stream for songwriters, composers and publishers."

"With online music subscription services taking hold and with the increase in mobile Internet connectivity, streaming music to mobile phones is a natural extension of today's technology," said Mike Pinto, CEO at mobZilla. "MobZilla has taken the logical step of providing a single subscription service that gives users unlimited access to streaming music anywhere, anytime."

BMI has serviced the mobile entertainment space since 2001 and has processed more than 200,000,000 ringtone transactions to clear public performance rights on behalf of songwriters, composers and music publishers. BMI currently pegs the wireless music market in excess of $500 million in retail sales for calendar year 2005.

About mobZilla: MobZilla, LLC is a leading wireless media company developing solutions for the delivery of personalized, on demand entertainment to the mobile phone. From text messaging to mobile streaming, mobZilla powers its partners and delivers entertainment directly to consumers. A developer of a multiplatform streaming audio solution that delivers audio to PC's and mobile phones, the mobZilla service allows subscribers to listen to a personalized mix from over 30 content genres, including urban, pop, club, rock, Latin and comedy.

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