A leading developer and manufacturer of high-performance CD-related equipment has announced plans to include Liquid Audio Player Plus software in the company’s PlexWriter CD-R/RW drives, devices capable of burning personalized CD’s. Santa Clara, Calif., based Plextor Corp also announced that it will employ Liquid Audio’s Liquid Store to facilitate the secure distribution and sale of audio content on the Plextor Web site, giving Plextor users access to more than 150,000 digital downloads.
The new hardware, to be introduced as the year unfolds, will allow users to stream, download, purchase and playback secure, CD-quality music files. The next-generation CD-R/RW devices the company envisions will still allow users can also “rip” music from their own CD collections and export music to their CD-R/RW drive to create custom CDs. Liquid Audio’s software uses Gracenote’s CDDB music recognition technology to enable fans to retrieve related album/artist information for imported music.
In a printed statement announcing the agreement, Paul Melnychuck, vice president of Sales and Business Development for Liquid Audio said “Using Liquid Audio’s extensive music catalog and digital delivery services and consumer software, Plextor can quickly and easily provide a large collection of downloadable music to their customers.”