Ventis Media has released a new version of its award-winning MediaMonkey music management software for serious collectors. With storage becoming cheaper and serious collectors building massive music libraries, MediaMonkey now supports multi-terabyte music collections with over 100,000 tracks. MediaMonkey 3 is available today in free and paid versions at www.mediamonkey.com.

“This release of MediaMonkey is a major upgrade over previous versions,” said Russell Samuels, VP Marketing at Ventis Media. “In addition to supporting the needs of serious collectors, version 3.0 is also slicker, more user friendly, syncs with more devices, adds Podcasting and Album Art browsing, and will appeal to almost anyone who feels that iTunes or Windows Media Player is too simple to meet their music management needs.”

The new release adds over 200 new features and improvements including:

• Much-improved performance for collections of 100,000+ tracks
• Classical music management: MediaMonkey 3 adds support for fields required by classical music collectors, and supports tags with multiple attributes (e.g. Artist field supports multiple Artists). Users can also create customized subcollections (e.g. a single library that has a Rock Music collection, Classical Music collection, Audiobook collection).
• Automated library organization: MediaMonkey 3 Gold adds automated file organization that can re-organize tracks in the background into specific directory and filename formats as specified by the user.
• AAC (M4A, M4P, M4B) tagging and playback
• Podcast subscriptions
• New UI and skins
• Browsing by album art, iTunes-style browser, or Vista-style navigation bar
• Automated volume leveling with per album volume leveling
• New audio engine with crossfading and silence suppression
• On-the-fly conversion and volume leveling for CD burning
• Syncs and levels volume on-the-fly for the latest iPhones, iPods, and other devices

“Our users told us that they wanted a Music Manager that can scale to 100,000+ tracks, so we designed MediaMonkey 3.0 for scalability from the ground up,” explained Jiri Hajek, VP Development at Ventis Media. “To support such large collections, version 3 adds automated library management for bookkeeping functions such as volume analysis and file naming. It also allows users to segment large collections into sub-collections such as Classical Music or Contemporary Music, each configured with custom views and playback rules. For example, a Classical Music collection can be configured to display Conductor and play with cross-fading disabled.”

“Our buyers are serious audiophiles with large music collections in lossless audio formats such as FLAC,” said David Chesky, CEO of HDTracks.com. “MediaMonkey is the best music manager for our users. It supports all of the high-end features they require, without requiring them to be technically advanced.”

About Ventis Media

Ventis Media is a provider of advanced music management tools. Founded in 2003, the company is headquartered in Montreal, Canada, with offices in the Czech Republic. MediaMonkey is an award-winning music manager and jukebox for serious music collectors and iPod users. It catalogs CDs, AAC, OGG, WMA, FLAC, MP3 and other audio files, including contemporary and classical music, audiobooks, podcasts, etc. It offers multiple tools for looking up and editing tags, and an automated library organizer to organize files on the hard drive. It includes a CD ripper, CD/DVD Burner, and audio converter for saving music, and advanced playlisting for creating music mixes. Its player automatically adjusts volume levels and supports a Party mode that locks the UI for use at public events. It syncs tracks, playlists, and podcasts to portable audio devices such as iPhones, iPods, MP3 Phones, and other devices, and supports hundreds of scripts, plug-ins and visualizations to extend its functionality further. It has won numerous awards including 5-star Editor rating on download.com, 5-star Editor’s pick award on Freeware Genius, and Winner of the Skytopia Media Player Shootout. For more information, please visit http://www.mediamonkey.com.

Media contact:

Dov Smith
press@mediamonkey.com

“Our competitors are huge, but they’re also weighed down by proprietary technologies and audio formats,” explained Russell Samuels, VP Marketing at Ventis Media. “iTunes is closely aligned with the AAC/Fairplay format and works really well with the iPod, but doesn’t work with other devices and lossless formats such as FLAC. Windows Media Player uses WMA and works well with ‘Plays for Sure’ devices, but doesn’t synch with iPods. These types of issues have driven users to the open MP3 format and to MediaMonkey.”

Market research confirm users’ frustration with proprietary formats and preference to the standard MP3 format: The average iPod contains only about 10 AAC tracks purchased via iTunes**, while the rest of it is filled with MP3s. By the same token, eMusic has vaulted into the #2 position in online music sales thanks to its focus on selling music in the non-proprietary MP3 format***.

According to Clayton M. Christensen, the Harvard professor and author of The Innovator’s Dilemma, during the early phases of an industry “a proprietary solution is almost always the right solution — because it allows you to knit all the pieces together in an optimized way. But once the technology matures and becomes good enough, industry standards emerge. That leads to the standardization of interfaces, which lets companies specialize on pieces of the overall system, and the product becomes modular. At that point, the competitive advantage of the early leader dissipates…”****

“Being as small as we are, MediaMonkey has no alternate agenda of selling specific devices, or marketing a particular music format. Serious music collectors appreciate a music organizer that focuses on their needs and supports a broad range of formats and devices.” commented Jiri Hajek, VP Development.

MediaMonkey is available at http://www.mediamonkey.com

• See: http://www.download.com/sort/3150-2141_4-0-1-4.html
• See: http://www.itunesperipod.com/ & http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/08/12/apple_itunes_2006/
• See: http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/emusic.ars
• See: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jan2006/tc20060109_432937.htm