Mindawn, a revolutionary new online music and video service, has been selected by the University of California system as a partner to provide music and video to their approximate 200,000 large student population.

Universities across the country are facing increasing pressure to curb the practice of individuals distributing digital files of copyrighted songs and movies without permission on university networks. As creators and owners of intellectual property and licensed technology, UC has a strong commitment to upholding intellectual property laws, including the need to protect against the illegal sharing of copyrighted materials in digital format, which is where Mindawn comes in.

Most online music services tie the user to one or at best two computer platforms: iTunes is only for Mac OS X and Windows; Napster is Windows-only. Mindawn, on the other hand, works with all three major platforms -- Windows, Mac OS X and Linux -- and is fully compatible with all three. With Mindawn's cross-platform client software, you can even hear a full preview of the entire song, unlike competing services, which only offer brief excerpts.

Competitors also normally only offer music files that are reduced in quality through what's called " lossy compression". The more compressed a file is, the greater the loss in sound quality. By contrast, Mindawn offers its files in both Ogg Vorbis and FLAC formats. Ogg Vorbis, unlike MP3, is a totally free and open sound format, and offers superior sound quality compared to MP3 and other compression techniques. Meanwhile, FLAC is full CD quality and while 50% smaller, can easily be converted to AIFF or WAV files for use in standard CD players or converted to virtually any other lossy format for use on any portable media player.

Mindawn is the only online music service to offer FLAC and Ogg Vorbis as its standard music file formats, and is the only service to offer music in both "lossy" and "lossless" forms in addition to video.

"Mindawn will be a valuable partner for campuses instituting online entertainment programs because of its wide range of content by independent artists and its offer to allow UC students to market their own music,” said David Walker, Director of Advanced Technology for the University of California, who oversaw the selection of vendors for UC . “This is an important endeavor that we are embarking on, and we are pleased to be working with an established leader on the project.”

Shawn Gordon, President of Mindawn (theKompany) had this to say, “We are honored and excited to have been chosen to work with such a prestigious University system. We’re confident that the technology we bring to the table will be a great fit for UC”.

(July 18, 2005)