Thomson’s Role in Yahoo-Musicmatch Deal

Slightly speculative, but connecting the dots: Thomson Multimedia is the largest investor in Musicmatch, and it also happens to license the MP3 codec to everyone.

“I suspect that Thomson will start charging Yahoo’s Musicmatch for each MP3 encode…this means that the free high-quality, CD-ripping feature in Musicmatch will probably be a thing of the past.”

Also, Thomson is developing an open DRM standard for the MP3 format…Thomson could provide Yahoo with the missing piece of its puzzle, potentially better than the proprietary one Microsoft has already developed.

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