Major Music Labels Invest in Listen.com

It seems you can get the big five record labels to agree on one thing. They've all invested in Listen.com ( http://www.listen.com), a company that produces a directory of downloadable music.

Listen.com announced that BMG, EMI, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group have invested in the company. The fifth label, Sony Music, invested in Listen.com in October 1999.Also MaverickRecords principals Guy Oseary and Ronnie Dashev have become investors.

Terms of the investments were not released.

"Having all five major labels as investors means that Listen.com is nowclearly positioned as the platform for discovering digital music," saidListen.com founder and CEO Rob Reid. "These investments in Listen.com are alsoanother significant sign that the entire music industry will be movingaggressively online this year."

Listen.com also announced deals with six independent labels today:KOCH Entertainment, Mammoth Records, Ministry of Sound, Moonshine Music,TVT Records, and Ubiquity Records. Listen.com now has deals with14 independent labels.

Naturally, this puts Listen.com in good company. They've also made deals with major music download sites,including MP3.com, Emusic and Liquid Audio, and is powering music downloadsearches on sites via syndication deals, includingExcite, Lycos, RealNetworks, Shockwave.com, Snap.com, Sony and ZDNet.

"Listen.com cuts through all the clutter on the Web and gets fans closerto the music they love," said Jay Samit, EMI senior vice president for newmedia.

"The Internet offers huge opportunities for artists and labels to betterconnect with fans all over the world," said Guy Oseary of Maverick Records."I'm confident that Listen.com is going to be a company that plays a majorrole in this new music revolution."