Muze to stream Sony-owned songs

Entertainment information company Muze said Tuesday that it has formed ties with Sony Music Entertainment to stream music samples for online promotions. Under the licensing deal, New York-based Muze has secured rights to Sony's vast catalog of songs and is authorized to stream the tunes as promotional samples for its streaming audio preview service, dubbed MuzeTunes. Launched in May, MuzeTunes provides retailers with audio clips in Microsoft's Windows Media Audio format. The deal also gives Muze the authorization to display front cover album art. The announcement comes shortly after Muze settled a patent infringement lawsuit with digital music company Intouch Group. The Berkeley, Calif.-based company sued Muze, Amazon.com, AOL Time Warner's Entertaindom, Liquid Audio, Listen.com and Loudeye Technologies' DiscoverMusic, accusing them of infringing its patent covering a potentially wide range of music for downloading and streaming. -- Gwendolyn Mariano, Special to ZDNet News