German Music Service Launches with Fraunhofer Watermarking

German Music Service Launches with Fraunhofer Watermarking
September 21, 2006
By Bill Rosenblatt

H2 Media Factory, based in Bonn, Germany, last week launched a beta version of a music download site called Akuma, which features a collection of 350,000 tracks from independent labels.  The tracks, on sale for EUR 0.89 or more each, are in unencrypted MP3 format with device-specific watermarks (fingerprints).  The Fraunhofer-Institut supplied the watermarking technology.

This is happening while eMusic.com, which provides much the same set of music in MP3 format for a monthly subscription fee, is caught in a dispute between the British collecting society MCPS-BRS and its Dutch counterpart Buma-Stemra over the validity of a pan-European music license that the latter granted to eMusic.  The squabble is typical of the way in which certain entrenched European collecting societies are slowing down growth of licensed music services in Europe, and it is holding up eMusic's European launch.

The watermarking technology used in Akuma is not the first example of indie tracks being given fingerprint watermarks in an Internet download service -- Bitmunk, which appeared two years ago, is another example -- but it is a good example of the gradual proliferation of watermarking applications for content protection.

In fact, an industry trade association has just formed to accelerate the pace of watermarking adoption: the Digital Watermarking Alliance (DWA), which was officially launched yesterday.  The DWA is centered around Digimarc and licensee of its patent portfolio such as Philips and Verance.  The DWA will host events, publish case studies, and share best practices about a wide range of watermarking applications, and not just in the media industry.