Laramedia Inc., an Internet distribution network for commercial audio

The distribution of digital media over the Internet is a technologically complex, costly, and labor intensive task involving processes such as ripping, encoding, acquiring META-data, digital rights management, and managing network storage and hosting infrastructure. These tasks are further complicated by such problems as continuous new releases, changing META-data, frequently updated CODECs and media players, and technology advancements such as wireless distribution and the advent peer-to-peer networks. We apply the well-understood services bureau model to the problems associated with audio distribution over the Internet, as well as provide an analysis of the liabilities associated with both the possession, as well as distribution, of content. The goals of this model are to minimize costs, liabilities of rapid technological advances, and marketplace volatility via the creation of a network of service providers that compete to provide best-of-breed content distribution services (hosting, encoding, etc), as well as allowing future service-providers to plug-in to the network as they become commercially available (DRM, wireless distribution, etc.).