Loudeye to Provide Services for the UK’s Freeserve

Major UK Internet portal Freeserve has chosen Loudeye Technologies Inc. to encode audio and video content for its broadband video portal. Loudeye considers the Freeserve deal as a major step toward its goal of European expansion, toward which end it established an office in London earlier this year.

Freeserve boasts more than 1.9 million active registered members. "As the leading Internet portal and ISP in the UK, Freeserve is poised to reap the benefits of audio and video," said Doug Schulze, minister of markets and solutions, vice president of marketing, at Loudeye. "Our digital media services ensure their members will have a high quality viewing experience across all platforms and connection speeds."

The Freeserve Residential and Business High-Speed Internet service and its broadband content portal are scheduled to be launched in September in over 10 cities in the UK. It will include rich content from a wide variety of content providers including ITN for domestic, international, business and sports reports, 24-hour access to ITN Radio, Virgin Records for music, entertainment and high-profile Webcasts, plus Peoplesound.com, Europe's No.1 free Internet music download site. The Music Choice digital audio service will provide Freeserve users with 24-hour, uninterrupted access to its Hit List audio channel, and @Jakarta, the electronic games retailer, will offer digital downloads of games and software products and services.