Liquid Audio releases new software

Liquid Audio has unveiled its latest audio playing software, Liquid Audio 5, for the Windows and Macintosh operating systems. Liquid Audio claims to protect intellectual copyright by delivering digital audio to consumers directly from the Web sites of musicians, retailers and record labels. Its new audio player, Liquid Audio 5, will simplify a consumer's audio shopping experience by "making confusing Internet music formats, security and digital rights management systems easy to use and transparent to customers", the company said in a statement.

Liquid Audio 5 will play music coded in the MP3, WAV and audio CD formats and support the audio compression standards Advanced Audio Codec (AAC), Dolby Digital's AC3, Sony's ATRAC 3 and MP3, said the statement. The software will offer the choice to download or stream audio from a selection of more than 70,000 tracks belonging to 1400 labels, including BMG Entertainment, EMI, Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group.

Once a digital audio track has been downloaded, Liquid Audio 5 will provide the facility to transfer the audio files to CDs, citing support for the CD-R (Writable) and CD-RW (CD-ReWritable) drives from Hewlett-Packard, Sony, Plextor, Toshiba and Sanyo Electronics.

Liquid Audio 5 will also feature an "Organizer" that will help users organize music files and titles by artist, album or song title. The Organizer will have the ability to create custom play lists and search for tracks.

By partnering with a number of popular online retailers, Liquid Audio has expanded the reach of its media player. Many prominent online retailers, including Amazon.com, Tower Records, CDNow, Virgin Jamcast and HMV, will use Liquid Audio 5 technology to deliver digital audio to consumers over the Internet.www.liquidaudio.com