Groove Mobile and The Orchard Sign Worldwide Music Licensing Agreement

Groove Mobile and The Orchard Sign Worldwide Music Licensing Agreement

Deal Brings Full-Track Music Downloads from 73 Countries Direct to Music Fans' Mobile Phones

ANDOVER, Mass. and NEW YORK, Jan. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Groove Mobile, the world's leading mobile music download service, today announced a worldwide licensing deal with the global distributor and marketer of independent music labels, The Orchard. With this deal, Groove Mobile will ensure that music lovers around the world have instant access to full track downloads, direct to their mobile phones, from the entire Orchard catalogue spanning over 22,000 artists from 73 countries.

"Groove Mobile and The Orchard understand that today's mobile music fans want to direct access to a wide variety of independent artists," Greg Scholl, chief executive of The Orchard and managing director of Dimensional Associates, the company that owns The Orchard, eMusic and Dimensional Music Publishing. "With Groove Mobile, The Orchard's artists -- which represent virtually every genre of music -- have a great opportunity to put their music directly in front of new fans and old reach out to old ones."

The lengthy roster of influential musicians and artists on independent labels that The Orchard distributes and markets will be available direct to the mobile phones of music lovers across the globe via the Groove Mobile platform. The Orchard, distributes some of the globe's premier independent labels such as Lookout!, Fierce Panda, Saregama, Shanacie, SST, Laugh.com, Delicious Vinyl, Epsa and hundreds of others, as well as distributing independent releases from such talented artists as Ray Charles, Green Day, Afrika Bambaataa, Ravi Shankar, Black Flag, Public Enemy, John Legend, George Carlin, Coldplay and others.

The new licensing agreement with The Orchard comes as Groove Mobile has rapidly expanded its global footprint of wireless carriers to include Telecom New Zealand and Bell Mobility Canada, in addition to mobile carriers in the US, UK, EU and Asia. Groove Mobile also launched the first mobile music store in the United States, the Sprint Music Store, and powers the award-winning Orange Music Player in the UK. Today, Groove Mobile's innovative features such as dual downloading direct to mobile handsets and PC's and peer-to-peer text messaging of song clips, are setting the standard for mobile music services.

"Groove Mobile and The Orchard share a commitment to bringing artists from around the world direct to the mobile phones of music fans on every corner of the globe," stated Adam Sexton, Vice President, Marketing and Product Management. "Groove Mobile is putting the music first because today's music fans want their music instantly for listening and for sharing."

ABOUT GROOVE MOBILE

Groove Mobile is the world's leading provider of full-track mobile music download services. Groove Mobile's turnkey solutions enable mobile operators to offer their customers a compelling music experience directly to their mobile phones. With an end-to-end software solution that fully integrates into each mobile network operator's billing system, Groove Mobile offers the opportunity for carriers to increase their average revenue per customer. Groove Mobile's direct download service is available in 6 countries and provides access to music from EMI, Warner Music International and V2 libraries. On the Internet, Groove Mobile is located at www.groovemobile.net.

ABOUT THE ORCHARD

The Orchard (www.theorchard.com) is the leading distributor and marketer of independent music in the world, representing thousands of labels spanning 73 countries and every music genre. The Orchard supplies its catalogue of more than 700,000 tracks to all of the leading legal digital music retailers and mobile operators throughout the world. The company is headquartered in New York and London, with operations in Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Tel Aviv, Hong Kong, Toronto, Kolkata, Johannesburg, Moscow and Melbourne, and local representatives in Paris, Milan, Berlin, Barcelona, Lausanne, Ramallah and Nairobi.

Source: Groove Mobile

CONTACT: Bennet Ratcliff of Group SJR, +1-310-261-0408,
bratcliff@groupsjr.com, for Groove Mobile

Web site: http://www.theorchard.com/

Web site: http://www.groovemobile.net/

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