Mercora Delivers IM Radio 3.0 -- Next-Generation Digital Radio; User-Contributed Digital Radio Takes Music Beyond AM, FM and XM

SANTA CLARA, CA -- April 19, 2005 -- Mercora, the Internet’s largest and fastest growing user-contributed digital radio network, today announced the availability of Mercora IM Radio 3.0, based on the company’s patent pending Individual Modulation (IM) digital radio technology.


Mercora’s IM Radio is the company’s “universal digital radio receiver” that connects users to the largest legal digital music radio network powered by people, disk jockeys and artists. With over twenty thousand commercial-free channels available daily, users can search, find and listen to thousands of artists and hundreds of genres in high fidelity sound. IM Radio also allows users to record or time-shift authorized webcasts for later listening.

The innovative IM Radio 3.0 release provides:

-- A new metaphor for digital radio that allows people to search, find, listen and record music and related programming from users, DJs and artists on Mercora’s global radio networks in the U.S. and Canada. IM Radio also allows users to easily search the network for available broadcasts by artist, genre and DJ/webcaster. Much in the way that Google allows users to search key terms, Mercora allows users to rapidly search for and listen to digital music.

-- Access to ten’s of thousands of individually programmed music radio channels. The user-contributed nature of the network provides for a wide diversity in genres and styles that truly reflect the musical tastes of people all over the world. Such a capability is unavailable on any existing terrestrial, satellite or Internet radio service.

-- The ability to record or time-shift authorized webcasts for listening later at a more convenient time or when disconnected from the Internet. This feature has been developed in strict compliance with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the legality of time-shifting in the 1984 Sony-Betamax case. IM Radio recordings are meant for private and personal use only and are protected and cannot be copied, redistributed or re-broadcast.

-- High fidelity, near-CD quality sound by incorporating a highly optimized version of Ogg Vorbis, a fully open, non-proprietary, patent-and-royalty-free, general-purpose compressed audio format for audio and music. Ogg Vorbis is in the same competitive class as MPEG-4 (AAC), and similar to, but higher performance than MP3 and WMA.

-- The ability to go beyond static playlist sharing by enabling any user to become a live DJ or disk jockey and webcast their playlists in real-time. Mercora’s IM DJ application provides services that enable anyone to rapidly create a personalized radio station.

-- Mercora’s patent-pending copyright compliance module ensures that webcasts are always compliant with copyright regulations and usage is tracked for appropriate royalty payments to copyright holders.

-- Mercora connects users to each other through music. It enables people on the network to find and connect with other people with similar music tastes through instant messaging, group chat and discussion forums.

“Mercora IM Radio 3.0 represents the culmination of a long and intense development cycle for us,” said Michael Stokes, chief technology officer, Mercora. “The technologies that we have developed make IM Radio one of the most compelling and legal alternatives to music sharing on the Internet and represents a seminal shift in the concept we have come to know as radio.”

IM Radio is available in two versions -- Premier and Basic. IM Radio Premier is available for $4.99 per month or $47.88 per year with unlimited listening and 10 hours of recording capability. IM Radio Basic is available free with 1 hour of listening per day. Mercora also offers a 7-day, free trial to IM Radio Premier.

About Mercora, Inc.

Mercora’s mission is to completely redefine radio by creating the world’s largest user-contributed digital radio network. Mercora (www.mercora.com) is headquartered in Santa Clara, CA.

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