Digital Goods And Groove Networks to Develop Digital Content Storefronts

Posted on April 11, 2001

Digital Goods, a provider of digital content marketing services, announced a business partnership with Groove Networks, developers of a peer computing platform, to develop a new method for content providers to create and distribute storefronts for secure sale of their digital products.

The initial promise of the Digital Goods-Groove applications is subscription-based sales of digital content for the business marketplace, such as financial and investment research, corporate intelligence and other time-sensitive products, as well as business training and education materials. Subscriptions to travel, health, self-help and other customizable information collections also fit into the Digital Goods-Groove model. Future applications could include ``pay-and-play'' virtual rental shops for audio, video, ebook and other digital content; as well as protected one-to-one or group sharing of sensitive ``locked'' content with real-time collaboration capabilities.

``As things stand today, with the Napster copyright scare and the market for eBooks still in its early growth stage, content owners are looking not only for security solutions but also a business model that works,'' said Bob Leone, Digital Goods VP of Strategic Alliances. ``We believe the marriage of the Groove Networks platform with our technology and marketing tools has the potential to help content providers begin to truly unleash the value of their digital products.''

Under the agreement, Digital Goods is adapting its content management technology and Amplifi marketing and ecommerce tools to work in concert with the distributed computing platform developed by Groove Networks. Using the Digital Goods applications, content providers will be able to distribute storefronts or subscription modules through one or many Groove ``shared spaces,'' which enable businesses or individual consumers to synchronize and store content locally on their desktops.