Thumbplay News

New Cloud-Based, On Demand Music Service to be Featured on Carrier Portal: Customers to Have Direct, Unlimited Access to Millions of Songs

NEW YORK (24 May 2010) – Thumbplay^®, the leading provider of mobile entertainment in the U.S. today, and Cellular South^®, the nation’s largest privately owned wireless communications provider, have forged a deal that will give Cellular South customers direct access to the new cloud-based Thumbplay^® Music^™ (www.thumbplaymusic.com) service.

As a result of the partnership, Cellular South customers can get unlimited, on-demand access to millions of songs directly from their wireless handsets and they will be able to download the Thumbplay Music application directly from Cellular South’s Discover Center website. The service will be rolled out soon on Android^™ and BlackBerry^® smartphones.

Thumbplay Music, a next generation music service built by experts in mobile content delivery, has more than 8 million tracks under license from all major labels and more than 35,000 independent labels and comes with a free, three-day trial. Subscriptions are available for $9.99 a month.

“We’re thrilled to be the first to offer Thumbplay Music directly to our customers,” said Jim Richmond, director of Corporate Communications for Cellular South. “Thumbplay Music literally transforms the smartphone into the ultimate, portable music player – it’s loaded with features and an extensive catalog of music that will inspire music fans of all ages and tastes.”

Richmond said recent industry research shows that more consumers than ever are using their mobile devices to download and listen to music. A recent comScore study* revealed that listening to music is the third fastest growing use of mobile phones in the U.S. Richmond added, “Downloading and listening to music is clearly one of the fastest growing and most popular ways that consumers are using their mobile devices.”

Evan Schwartz, CEO and co-founder of Thumbplay, said he expects Cellular South customers to quickly embrace the new service. “They have an extremely engaged, loyal customer base that will fully appreciate having a rich, on-demand music service always at their fingertips,” he added.

Thumbplay Music includes its own in-app media player and boasts several compelling features, including:

· Unlimited, on-demand access to any artist or album; millions of songs to choose from.

· Build a personal music collection with Favorites and Playlist creation; auto-sync between smartphone and PC/Mac.

· Online and offline access: No connection? No problem! Listen to music on the subway or in-flight. Available anytime, anywhere.

· Genie for music discovery: Instantly generate customized recommendations from favorite songs.

· Search: Find music by artist, song, album or genre; includes free previews of all songs.

· Import existing iTunes^® playlists within Thumbplay Music’s companion desktop app. With a few clicks, recreate iTunes playlists and have them available on smartphone and PC/Mac.

Thumbplay, which enjoys sustained profitability, has built an award-winning service centered on delivering mobile entertainment content to 95 percent of U.S. devices on every major wireless carrier. Thumbplay will leverage its existing network of more than 8,000 distribution partners to promote Thumbplay Music.

###

* The study by comScore MobiLens, a mobile marketing research firm, covered the three-month period ending in March 2010. The study reviewed the most popular activities and mobile content accessed by the nation’s 234 million wireless phone users age 13 and order.

About Thumbplay

Thumbplay, Inc. is the leading mobile entertainment provider in the U.S. Thumbplay Music, the company’s cloud-based, streaming music service for smartphones and PCs/Macs, was launched in January 2010 with more than 8 million songs under license. Thumbplay.com features licensed music, video and games from some of the world’s largest entertainment companies, including: EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group, as well as several independent labels and artists and video game companies. Headquartered in New York City, Thumbplay was founded in September 2004. Investors include Bain Capital Ventures, SoftBank Capital, i-Hatch Ventures, Redwood Partners, New Enterprise Associates, Meritech, Brookside Capital Partners and Cross Creek Capital. More information can be found at www.thumbplay.com or at m.thumbplay.com from a mobile phone.

About Cellular South

Cellular South is a privately-owned diversified mobile communications company passionately committed to helping customers get the most out of their wireless devices and services. The nation’s largest privately owned wireless communications carrier accomplishes this goal by providing the most reliable and advanced 3G nationwide wireless voice and data network, offering industry-leading smartphone devices and accessible flat rate plans, and through its online and in-store Discover Centers, which give customers easy, simple and convenient tools, tips, advice and information to get the most out of their mobile phone. For more information about Cellular South and its products and services, as well as its ground-breaking Cellular South Original user generated programming, visit www.cellularsouth.com. This news release and other announcements are available at http://www.cellularsouth.com/news/.

Labels: press, press-release

posted by BusTed Love at 8:48 AM

Company to Provide Early Glimpse of Cloud-Based Music Service App Using HTML5 on Google Chrome OS

NEW YORK – 10 MAY 2010 – Thumbplay^®, the leading provider of mobile entertainment in the U.S., announced today that it has been selected to demo its cloud-based Thumbplay^® Music^™ (www.thumbplaymusic.com) service at the 2010 Google^TM I/O Conference, being held May 19-20 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. The company will reveal an early release of the Thumbplay Music app running on Google Chrome^TM, which also supports Google’s Chrome operating system and utilizes HTML5 and CSS3. Thumbplay is one of 10 third-party apps to be showcased in the Chrome Pod of the Google I/O Developer Sandbox.

Thumbplay Music is an on-demand, subscription music service currently available on both the fastest-growing and largest smartphone platforms in the U.S., Android^TM and BlackBerry^® smartphones,* respectively. (Complete list of devices below.) The service is also currently available as a companion app on PCs/Macs^® and is coming soon on iPhone^®. Thumbplay Music has more than eight million tracks under license from all major labels and more than 25,000 independent labels.

“To be invited to the Developer Sandbox at Google I/O this year is a credit to our ongoing relationship with Google,” said Evan Schwartz, CEO and Co-Founder of Thumbplay. “With Google’s innovation, our team was able to create a feature-rich app that works beautifully and leverages the ease and simplicity of a browser.”

The Thumbplay Music application for Chrome OS was developed in accordance with the latest HTML5 and CSS3 web standards and will provide future Chrome OS users with unlimited, anytime/anywhere access to millions of songs. In addition, there will be a series of unique, web-based interactive features specific to Thumbplay Music for Chrome OS, such as offline playback and instant synching.

The Google I/O Conference is Google’s largest annual developer event, hosting thousands of leading developers and designers who have created and cultivated applications specific to Google and open web technology. The Developer Sandbox, introduced at the 2009 Google I/O Conference, serves as a select venue for developers to exchange detailed information regarding their services while presenting them to those in attendance at Google I/O. Developers and partners interested in meeting with Thumbplay during Google I/O can request a demo time here: http://developer.thumbplay.com.

Thumbplay Music includes its own in-app media player and boasts several compelling features, including:

· Unlimited, on-demand access to any artist or album; millions of songs to choose from;

· Build a personal music collection with Favorites and effortless Playlist creation; auto-sync between smartphone and PC/Mac;

· Online and offline access: No connection? No problem! Listen to music on the subway or in-flight. Available anytime, anywhere. (Offline access currently only available on BlackBerry devices; coming soon for Android);

· Playlist Genie for music discovery: Instantly generate customized recommendations from favorite songs;

· Search: Find music by artist, song, album or genre; includes free previews of all songs;

· Import existing iTunes^® playlists within Thumbplay Music’s companion desktop app. With a few clicks, recreate iTunes playlists and have them available on smartphone and PC/Mac;

· Free, “no strings attached” three-day trial; subscriptions are then available for $9.99/month.

Thumbplay, which enjoys sustained profitability, has built an award-winning service centered on delivering mobile entertainment content to 95 percent of U.S. devices on every major carrier. Thumbplay will leverage its existing network of more than 8,000 distribution partners to promote Thumbplay Music.

# # #

ABOUT THUMBPLAY

Thumbplay, Inc. is the leading mobile entertainment provider in the U.S. Thumbplay Music, the company’s cloud-based, streaming music service for smartphones and PCs/Macs, was launched in January 2010 with more than 8 million songs under license. Thumbplay.com features licensed music, video and games from some of the world’s largest entertainment companies, including: EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group, as well as several independent labels and artists and video game companies. Headquartered in New York City, Thumbplay was founded in September 2004. Investors include Bain Capital Ventures, SoftBank Capital, i-Hatch Ventures, Redwood Partners, New Enterprise Associates, Meritech, Brookside Capital Partners and Cross Creek Capital. More information can be found at www.thumbplay.com or at m.thumbplay.com from a mobile phone.

*According to comScore (April 2010), RIM is the leading mobile smartphone platform in the U.S. and Google’s Android™ platform is the fastest-growing.

Thumbplay Music is available on the following smartphones using the Android™ mobile technology platform with an Operating System of 1.6 or higher: (Motorola™) Droid™, Nexus One™, HTC^® G1™ and the HTC^® myTouch™ 3G

Thumbplay Music is currently available on the following BlackBerry^® smartphones: BlackBerry^® Bold 9000, BlackBerry^® Bold™ 9700, BlackBerry^® Curve™ 8900, BlackBerry^® Tour™ 9630, BlackBerry^® Storm™ 9530 and the BlackBerry^® Storm™ 2 9550

Labels: press, press-release

posted by BusTed Love at 9:16 AM

Premier, Cloud-Based Music Service is the First-of- its-Kind

on Both Android^TM and BlackBerry^® Smartphones

NEW YORK – 3 MAY 2010 – Thumbplay^®, the leading provider of mobile entertainment in the U.S., has launched its cloud-based Thumbplay® Music™ (www.thumbplaymusic.com) service in Android^TM Market, providing the Android fan-base with unlimited, anytime/anywhere access to millions of songs. Thumbplay Music is the only on-demand, subscription music service currently available on both the fastest-growing and largest smartphone platforms in the U.S., Android and BlackBerry^® smartphones,* respectively. (Complete list of devices below.) The service is also available as a companion app on PCs/Macs^® and it is coming soon on iPhone^®.

Thumbplay Music has more than eight million tracks under license from all major labels and more than 25,000 independent labels. Thumbplay Music is a next generation music service, built by experts in mobile content delivery to serve the rapidly growing market of U.S. smartphone users which is forecasted to grow to 160 million people by 2013.**

Said Evan Schwartz, CEO and Co-Founder of Thumbplay, “With Thumbplay Music now live on Android and BlackBerry smartphones, we’re giving tens of millions of people truly portable, anytime, anywhere access to all the music they want. We’ve been getting rave reviews from our Android users in Beta, especially when they employ the companion app on PC and see the power of having their complete music collections and playlists in-sync. We’re thrilled to deliver a music service worthy of discerning Android fans.”

Thumbplay Music includes its own in-app media player and boasts several compelling features, including:

• Unlimited, on-demand access to any artist or album; millions of songs to choose from
• Build a personal music collection with Favorites and effortless Playlist creation; auto-sync between smartphone and PC/Mac
• Online and offline access: No connection? No problem! Listen to music on the subway or in-flight. Available anytime, anywhere. (Offline access currently only available on BlackBerry devices; coming soon for Android.)
• Playlist Genie for music discovery: Instantly generate customized recommendations from favorite songs
• Search: Find music by artist, song, album or genre; includes free previews of all songs
• Import existing iTunes^® playlists within Thumbplay Music’s companion desktop app. With a few clicks, recreate iTunes playlists and have them available on smartphone and PC/Mac.
• Free, “no strings attached” three-day trial; subscriptions are then available for $9.99/month.

Thumbplay, which enjoys sustained profitability, has built an award-winning service centered on delivering millions of pieces of mobile content to 95 percent of U.S. devices among every major carrier. Thumbplay is leveraging its existing network of more than 8,000 distribution partners to promote Thumbplay Music.

# # #

ABOUT THUMBPLAY

Thumbplay, Inc. is defining the mobile entertainment experience for U.S. consumers. Thumbplay.com features licensed music, video and games from some of the world’s largest entertainment companies, including: EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group, as well as several independent labels and artists and video game companies. Headquartered in New York City, Thumbplay was founded in September 2004 by Are Traasdahl and Evan Schwartz. Investors include Bain Capital Ventures, SoftBank Capital, i-Hatch Ventures, Redwood Partners, New Enterprise Associates, Meritech, Brookside Capital Partners and Cross Creek Capital. More information can be found at www.thumbplay.com or at m.thumbplay.com from a mobile phone.

*According to comScore (April 2010), RIM is the leading mobile smartphone platform in the U.S. and Google’s Android platform is the fastest-growing.

Thumbplay Music is available on the following smartphones using the Android™ mobile technology platform with an Operating System of 1.6 or higher: (Motorola™) Droid™, Nexus One™, HTC® G1™ and the HTC® myTouch™ 3G.

Thumbplay Music is currently available on the following BlackBerry® smartphones: BlackBerry^® Bold 9000, BlackBerry^® Bold™ 9700, BlackBerry^® Curve™ 8520, BlackBerry^® Curve™ 8530, BlackBerry^® Curve™ 8900, BlackBerry^® Tour™ 9630, BlackBerry^® Storm™ 9530 and the BlackBerry^® Storm™ 2 9550.

**Yankee Group (2009)

All trademarks property of their respective owners. No partnerships implied. The BlackBerry and RIM families of related marks, images and symbols are the exclusive properties and trademarks of Research In Motion Limited.

Labels: press, press-release

posted by BusTed Love at 8:14 AM