MediaMonkey News, New Releases and Announcements

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The Little Monkey That Could: MediaMonkey Hits 1 Million Downloads on Download.com

[June 5, 2006] Ventis Media, a scrappy 4-person company, announced the 1 millionth download of MediaMonkey on Download.com, making it the #2 Music Management application on the world's leading software download site*.

"Our competitors are huge, but they're also weighed down by proprietary technologies and audio formats," explained Russell Samuels, VP Marketing at Ventis Media. "iTunes is closely aligned with the AAC/Fairplay format and works really well with the iPod, but doesn't work with other devices and lossless formats such as FLAC. Windows Media Player uses WMA and works well with 'Plays for Sure' devices, but doesn't synch with iPods. These types of issues have driven users to the open MP3 format and to MediaMonkey."

Market research confirm users' frustration with proprietary formats and preference to the standard MP3 format: The average iPod contains only about 10 AAC tracks purchased via iTunes**, while the rest of it is filled with MP3s. By the same token, eMusic has vaulted into the #2 position in online music sales thanks to its focus on selling music in the non-proprietary MP3 format***.

According to Clayton M. Christensen, the Harvard professor and author of The Innovator's Dilemma, during the early phases of an industry "a proprietary solution is almost always the right solution -- because it allows you to knit all the pieces together in an optimized way. But once the technology matures and becomes good enough, industry standards emerge. That leads to the standardization of interfaces, which lets companies specialize on pieces of the overall system, and the product becomes modular. At that point, the competitive advantage of the early leader dissipates..."****

"Being as small as we are, MediaMonkey has no alternate agenda of selling specific devices, or marketing a particular music format. Serious music collectors appreciate a music organizer that focuses on their needs and supports a broad range of formats and devices." commented Jiri Hajek, VP Development.

MediaMonkey is available at http://www.mediamonkey.com

About Ventis Media
Ventis Media is an upstart provider of advanced music distribution technology. We provide businesses and consumers with an integrated environment where they can view, play, organize, and purchase multimedia content.

* See: http://www.download.com/sort/3150-2141_4-0-1-4.html?
* See: http://www.itunesperipod.com/ & http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/08/12/apple_itunes_2006/
** See: http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/emusic.ars
*** See: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jan2006/tc20060109_432937.htm

For more information, contact:

514-867-8276

ANNOUNCING MEDIAMONKEY 2.5

[December 28, 2005] Announcing MediaMonkey 2.5 -- adding support for the latest generation of devices and services, including synchronization for the newest iPods, Creative Labs and iRiver devices, and automatically converting tracks on-the-fly to formats supported by those MP3 players.

It also includes support for DRM-protected tracks downloaded from Napster and Yahoo music, along with FLAC functionality for serious audiophiles. With FLAC encoding, tagging, and auto-conversion, MediaMonkey is now an excellent platform for lossless audio. Users can copy their CDs losslessly, play, organize and tag them, and synchronize those tags to their iPods by using on-the-fly conversion.

"MediaMonkey has developed a reputation as one of the best music managers, and one of our goals in this release was to improve some of its non-management features. We've added Party Mode so that it can be used in public places without worrying about alterations to the library and Auto-DJ so that tracks can be set to play automatically even when a playlist runs out," said Russell Samuels, VP Marketing.

"In addition to making sure that MediaMonkey has the best iPod support possible, we've also added MP3/Data CD/DVD burning since a growing percentage of car stereos now include MP3 CD playback," added Jiri Hajek, VP Engineering. "With a single click, users can burn a CD that is navigable via their car stereo."

MediaMonkey supports CD, MP3, OGG, WMA, FLAC, APE, and MPC formats along with many others via plug-ins. It catalogs, plays, rips, burns, converts, tags, creates mixes, and organizes large music collections. MediaMonkey is available now at http://www.mediamonkey.com .

About Ventis Media
Ventis Media is an upstart provider of advanced music distribution technology. We provide businesses and consumers with an integrated environment where they can view, play, organize, and purchase multimedia content.

For more information, contact:

514-867-8276

ANNOUNCING MEDIAMONKEY 2.4

[June 5, 2005] Announcing MediaMonkey 2.4 -- better, faster, and juicier than ever before. Now with support for iPod synchronization!

ANNOUNCING MEDIAMONKEY 2.3

[February 20, 2005] Announcing MediaMonkey 2.3 -- adding automated Album Art & track information lookup, FLAC support, integrated CD burning, much improved portable device synchronization, and a whole lot more. Ventis Media announced the release today of its new and improved MediaMonkey 2.2. Available online, MediaMonkey, which makes it easy for serious music collectors to organize tens of thousands of songs, now lets user who don't own an iPod to synchronize their collections with their portable audio devices.

ANNOUNCING MEDIAMONKEY 2.2
Adds iTunes-like Portable Audio Device Synchronization

[June 9, 2004] Ventis Media announced the release today of its new and improved MediaMonkey 2.2. Available online, MediaMonkey, which makes it easy for serious music collectors to organize tens of thousands of songs, now lets user who don't own an iPod to synchronize their collections with their portable audio devices.

"For those of us who can't afford an iPod, MediaMonkey now offers the rest of us a similar synchronization experience--it will now synchronize tracks and playlists to almost any portable audio device that is a USB mass storage device. If you can copy files to it in the Windows Explorer, it'll synch with MediaMonkey," said Jiri Hajek, Vice President Engineering at Ventis Media.

"Whereas a large segment of the online music world is developing online music services that are compatible with a particular client and a particular portable audio device, MediaMonkey's philosophy is to be able to support any online service with any audio format, using any portable audio device" said Russell Samuels, Vice President Marketing at Ventis Media. "We continue to believe that most consumers want choice: choice of software, choice of format, and choice of portable device. We're building a product that aims to satisfy these needs, while giving online music stores a tool that they can customize to their liking."

MediaMonkey supports CD, MP3, OGG, WMA, APE, and MPC formats along with many others via plug-ins. It catalogs, plays, rips, converts, tags, creates mixes, and organizes large music collections. MediaMonkey is available now at http://www.mediamonkey.com .

About Ventis Media
Ventis Media is an upstart provider of advanced music distribution technology. As audio, video, and still pictures migrate to digital formats, Ventis Media's MediaMonkey provides businesses and consumers with an integrated environment where they can view, play, organize, and purchase multimedia content.

MEDIAMONKEY 2.1 NOW AVAILABLE
Focuses on Music Management Instead of Music Sales

[October 23, 2003] Ventis Media announced the release today of its new and improved MediaMonkey 2.1. Available free online, MediaMonkey makes it easy for music lovers to manage the growing numbers of files they are downloading from online music services such as MusicMatch and Rhapsody.

"Most consumers obtain their digital music files from multiple sources: their own CD collections, online music services, and their friends. All of these files will be encoded and formatted differently, and most serious collectors will want a single application to organize them, level the volume, add lyrics, export them to other devices, and play them--no matter where they come from. Our mission is to build the best music manager possible and let other companies worry about building online music stores," said Jiri Hajek, Vice President Engineering at Ventis Media.

"To date, each of the online music services has required its users to install a custom client: MusicMatch Jukebox for the MusicMatch service; Real Player for the Rhapsody service, and so on. That's like Amazon forcing you to use an 'Amazon browser' in order to shop at Amazon, even if you prefer the Mozilla browser" said Russell Samuels, Vice President Marketing at Ventis Media. "We believe most consumers want choice: choice of software, choice of format, choice of purchase venue. We're building a product that aims to satisfy users regardless of formats and services used."

MediaMonkey supports CD, MP3, OGG, and WMA formats along with many others via plug-ins. It catalogs, plays, rips, converts, tags, creates mixes, and organizes large music collections. MediaMonkey is available now at http://www.mediamonkey.com .

MediaMonkey 2.0 Now Available - Raises the Bar for Music Management

[25-August-2003] Ventis Media announces the release of MediaMonkey 2.0. Available freely via the internet, MediaMonkey raises the bar for ease-of-use and power for managing collections of thousands of music files.

"If you're tired of using one program to organize your music, another to level the volume, and yet another to play it; if you're sick of the adware and the bloatware then MediaMonkey is what you're looking for," said Jiri Hajek, Vice President Engineering at Ventis Media.

"What makes MediaMonkey different from most other players is that we don't have any vested interest in a particular music service or format," said Russell Samuels, Vice President Marketing at Ventis Media. "Real Player works with the Rhapsody service; Microsoft Media Player is geared primarily for WMA files; Apple's iTunes only supports the iTunes store. That's like having a web browser that can used to purchase books only from Barnes & Noble--that's where Players are at today. MediaMonkey will be format and service agnostic."

About Ventis Media
Ventis Media is an upstart provider of advanced music distribution technology. As audio, video, and still pictures migrate to digital formats, Ventis Media's MediaMonkey will provide businesses and consumers with an integrated environment where they can view, play, organize, and purchase multimedia content.

Songs-DB 1.4 Beta is Available!

[27-May-2003] Songs-DB 1.4 beta is one of the most significant releases of the product to-date, including over 200 bugfixes and improvements. Some of the most significant changes are an improved UI, automated file monitoring, OGG encoding, an equalizer, support for DSP audio effect plug-ins, plus a variety of new & improved features and scores of bug fixes. A comprehensive list of changes can be viewed in the What's New file.

If you're interested in testing the beta, please check out the beta forum.

Songs-DB version 1.3 released

[31-Oct-2002] A new version was released today! It contains a lot of improvements, particularly direct audio CD burning (using Nero), Ogg Vorbis support and support for any other format by means of plug-ins. You can get the complete list of changes in the WhatsNew file and download the latest version on the download page.

You can also purchase Songs-DB Gold, which brings some even better features, for only $20.

Songs-DB version 1.2 released

[3-Jul-2002] A brand new version with a lot of improvements was released. Go to the download page, please, and download it there. If you want to know what is new, please check the WhatsNew file.

Songs-DB version 1.1 released

[7-Jun-2002] This is the final release version with some problems corrected. Go to the download page, to get it, and check out what's new in this version here..

Version 1.0.0 beta released

[12-Oct-2001] There are several new features particularly related to audio CD grabbing and interface improvements. As usually several bugs were corrected. More details about these improvements can be found in whatsnew.txt file.

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