Five major music companies and IBM Corp. recently completed a six-month electronic music distribution trial called AlbumDirect.
About 1,000 households subscribing to Time Warner Inc.’s Road Runner cable modem service in San Diego took part in the trial.
The AlbumDirect trial was the first market trial of an end-to-end digital music delivery system that offers a set of security features for fast and convenient distribution of CD-quality music over the Internet.
The trials were conducted using IBM’s Electric Music Management System, a comprehensive digital rights management and electronic media delivery system.
The purpose of the trial was to gather proprietary research about the consumer experience of purchasing and receiving music online and to test the integrity of IBM’s digital rights management system in downloading music from the Internet.
Besides IBM, sponsors of the trial were BMG Entertainment, EMI Music, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group.
