James Delahunty
8 Aug 2006 10:44
Finnish mobile phone giant Nokia has announced an agreement to acquire Loudeye Corp. for approximately $60 million. Loudeye is a loader in digital media distribution services. Nokia has produced several multimedia phones that are capable of playing popular digital audio formats like MP3, WMA, AAC and M4A. The company shipped more than 15 million music enabled devices in the 2nd quarter, making it the world's largest manufacture of digital music players.
"Music is a key experience for Nokia and Nokia Nseries multimedia computers and we want to be able to offer the best fully integrated mobile music experience to our customers. Loudeye brings a number of key assets to Nokia, including a great team of people, a substantial content catalogue and a robust service platform that will help us to achieve this objective," said Anssi Vanjoki, executive vice president and general manager, Multimedia, Nokia.
"People should be able to access all the music they want, anywhere, anytime and at a reasonable cost. With this acquisition, we aim to deliver that vision and a comprehensive music experience to Nokia device owners during 2007." he added. Loudeye operates 60 live services in over 20 countries and multiple languages across Europe and South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Loudeye aggregates rights and content from all the major record labels and hundreds of independents and currently offers licensed catalog and complete media for over 1.6 million tracks.
"This agreement recognizes the key roles that Loudeye and our people play in the digital mobile music market, and reflects the power of our products, our team and our technology," said Michael Brochu, president and chief executive officer of Loudeye. "Our combined teams will deliver a comprehensive mobile music experience to Nokia device owners all over the world. With an industry leading music experience, a robust service platform, and extensive music rights, Loudeye has long been committed to delivering on the digital music needs of consumers, and we've built a leadership brand in the digital music marketplace".
Under the terms of the agreement, Loudeye stockholders will receive USD 4.50 per share in cash for each share of Loudeye common stock. The transaction is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2006. Closing of the transaction is subject to satisfaction of a number of conditions, including approval of Loudeye's stockholders, regulatory approvals, obtaining consents from third parties to the continuation, modification, extension and/or termination of certain specified contracts, and the absence of a material adverse effect in Loudeye's business or operations, including loss of employees, loss of customers, or failure to maintain a minimum specified cash balance, each as described in the merger agreement.
Source:
Press Release