Who is going to encode all that music so it can be downloaded or streamed online?
Encoding.com, a privately held, two-year-old company, wants to be the answer. In the last few days it has taken several steps toward that goal, inking deals with clients that run the gamut from giant EMI Music Distribution to San Francisco start-up Audio Explosion. Encoding.com takes digital content–for music companies, that generally means CDs–and converts it to formats for streaming or customer downloading. Founder and chief executive Martin Tobias said Encoding.com can convert audio or video tracks into an array of formats, such as MP3, Windows Media, Liquid Audio, or a2b Music. In doing so, Seattle-based Encoding.com takes advantage of a potentially huge market, without running the same risks as the content providers themselves. Even if online downloads and streaming don’t catch on in the mass market as they are expected to, the Internet industry won’t know it until after tremendous amounts of content are made available to consumers, which means Encoding.com will have already don
