Five Content and Infrastructure Partners Sign Deals to Supply Free Access to Millions of Music Samples, Video Clips and Images to Create Custom Web Channels That Mix User-Generated and Legal Studio Content
SAN MATEO, Calif., May 8 /PRNewswire/ -- MixerCast, a venture-funded Web 2.0 startup which recently emerged from stealth mode into public alpha, today announced that it has signed licensing deals with well known content providers to allow MixerCast users to legally combine professionally-produced videos, music and images with their own content and hyper-syndicate the rich media mashups on the Internet. Instead of broadcasting pre-packaged channels of content through a traditional media network model, MixerCast makes it easy for consumers to create, distribute and remix content from a variety of sources by using a rich set of editing and publishing tools, ad-infused and product- placement-ready templates, and open access to a large library of studio content. Users can monetize their creative work by proactively adding advertising into their MixerCast content packages as they virally spread across the Web, which are then tracked by a robust set of built-in measurement systems.
Newly registered MixerCast users now have free access to more than 4,000,000 music samples and 50,000 video clips and images included in the site's professional content library. Through its partnership with Muze.com, MixerCast provides a broad variety of audio and video clip selections from content partners such as Universal Music Group, Virgin Records, Warner Music Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Disney Theatrical Films, and Warner Home Video. Pump Audio provides thousands of full tracks from independent performing artists. Through its pre-negotiated content deals, MixerCast also offers access to video clips and images from National Geographic and Getty Images. More content partnerships are currently in the works. In addition to the professional content library, consumers can easily find and automatically import content into the MixerCast Wizard or Designer from public sites like Flickr, YouTube or PhotoBucket, or upload multimedia files from their own personal libraries. Mixercast's partnership with Bitgravity optimizes performance and enhances the experience when dealing with multimedia content objects.
"With the debut of MixerCast, people now have an easy way to fuse their own content with legal studio content and create custom Web channels, movies, music videos, photo galleries or personal RSS feeds. It's like having your own personal broadcast station with access to high-quality licensed content so you can create context and a much richer experience," said Jennifer Cooper, MixerCast CEO, who recently left Yahoo! to co-found and lead the company. "Our vision is to drive the next big wave of syndicated content and advertising on the Web. It's no longer about simply serving up ads based on search keywords. With MixerCast, highly-engaged users mix, monetize and network their interactive productions. Users can also include licensed, branded content when they share or post their Mixercasts via email, their favorite sites or blogs."
In addition to supplying a powerful platform and an intuitive environment for anyone to enjoy, create, publish and network media mashups everywhere, MixerCast provides free access to a gallery of creations on the site. Visitors can review, rate and comment on the content posted to the MixerCast Gallery. If the original creator permits it, the Mixercast can be remixed and recreated over and over again, which creates a built-in viral engine to further network the content around the Web. Gallery visitors can view the publicly-available MixerCasts via five tabs that order the posts based on ones that are "Most Recent," "Most Viewed," "Most Viral, "Top Rated," and "Editor's Picks."
"MixerCast extends National Geographic's presence on the Web in new ways by allowing our fans to more personally connect with our content," said Jocelyn Shearer, Vice President, Video Licensing and Archive Management at National Geographic. "The site provides a unique opportunity to combine user generated content with work done by our award-winning cinematographers. We're eager to observe how this growing trend may close the gap between content traditionally accessed by the production professional and the consumer."
"The content partnership with MixerCast creates a new channel for our independent musicians to promote their work and digitally connect with a growing and engaged audience of users on the Web," said Steve Ellis, founder and CEO of Pump Audio. "Unlike other larger music labels, we provide access to a growing catalog of tens of thousands of songs in their entirety, all by independent artists from around the world. Together, MixerCast users and Pump Audio artists can monetize their creativity without having to wait around for major labels, producers and agents to discover them."
MixerCast has been in development for more than a year by a team of talented software engineers. The site is built on Ajax, Flash and other cutting-edge software programming that makes it run smoothly and elegantly like a virtual desktop on the Web, or webtop. According to Flash Platform Analyst Brajeshwar Oinam, who collaborated on the project, the MixerCast Designer is "one of the most powerful Flash Applications we have ever attempted -- intelligent, optimized and every ounce of Flash's capabilities un-earthed and un-leased. (MixerCast is) an uber tool for online photo, video, audio editing and manipulation."
"By partnering with Mixercast, we're providing a powerful platform and technology combination to give users the best experience and optimized performance when dealing with multimedia content. Mixercast provides a unique and innovative approach to user powered advertising and media and we are very happy to support their efforts," said Perry Wu, Co-Founder and CEO of Bitgravity.
"After seeing many innovative Web 2.0 products and business models that we're regularly pitched for funding, we firmly believe that MixerCast is delivering a unique approach and feature set that no one else has fully provided to the marketplace yet," said Keyur Patel, a partner at ComVentures, a first-round MixerCast investor. "With MixerCast, consumers are rewarded with professionally-produced content and a way to monetize their creations, while allowing studios to make money from their copyrighted material instead of having it illegally pirated and distributed. It's really a win-win model."
About MixerCast
MixerCast is a privately owned company based in San Mateo, California with offices in Pune, India. The company develops and markets a new Web platform that makes it easy for anyone to mix user-generated media with professionally- produced content -- including millions of videos, music clips and audio tracks -- and publish these creations to the Web. It also provides robust measurement tools to track interest in the branded multimedia content mashups. For more information, please visit www.mixercast.com.
Contact:
Chris Knight
Cohn & Wolfe
Media Relations Manager
mixercast@cohnwolfe.com
415-365-8524 direct
Source: MixerCast
