Advanced Ringtone Format Creates Dynamic Conversations Between Callers - Before the Phone Gets Answered - Flipping the Script on Personalization and Storefronts

Advanced Ringtone Format Creates Dynamic Conversations Between Callers - Before the Phone Gets Answered - Flipping the Script on Personalization and Storefronts

April 19, 2007

    MONTE CARLO, Monaco, April 19 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ --
Major music, media and technology investment companies
invest in evolutionary media-telephony venture to
significantly increase the value of the mobile music
market.  The D. E. Shaw group, Bertelsmann Digital Media
Investments, Warner Music Group and prominent media and
telephony angel investors have invested $7.7 million in
Emotive Communications, Inc., a media technology and
services provider that has developed a real-time
interactive ringtone format for 3G, 4G and VoIP services.

    Emotive's flagship product, the patent-pending
"Push Ringer", reverses the common ringtone
model.  It enables a caller to push an outgoing ringtone to
the receiving phone allowing the caller, not the called
person, to set the tone.  The chosen Ringer is transmitted
to the recipient's handset and temporarily overrides the
phone's pre-set ringer.  The ringers can comprise audio,
video, animations, avatars or flash files.  Closing the
loop, if the called person likes the ringtone, the service
also enables him or her to instantly buy a copy of the
ringtone for his or her own phone.  Emotive's Push Ringer
moves beyond traditional mobile personalization by both
adding value to the ringtones users purchase for their own
phones and providing content recommendation and
impulse-purchase opportunities to the users' friends,
family and coworkers.  This new technology represents a
vastly more active, expressive and compelling form of call
personalization than exists in today's ringtone market
which is otherwise showing signs of leveling off at only
about 6% of mobile subscribers, worldwide, The Push Ringer
leverages rapidly emerging broadband wireless telephone and
wire-line VOIP networks.

    The product has already gained significant traction
with consumers.  Since its launch on Skype's VOIP network
in 2006, Push Ringer (known to Skype users as
"Ringjacker") has been installed more than
800,000 times and is demonstrating significant peer to peer
pass-along rates.  Emotive is unveiling its mobile prototype
of the Push Ringer at the IMS World Forum in Monaco on April
24th 2007.

    "Our Push Ringer brings a new level of real-time
interactive multimedia enhancement to
telecommunications," said Emotive CEO Anthony
Stonefield. "Consumers are influenced by their peers. 
We are creating the ultimate `word of mouth' network,
literally by inserting music and video into the initiation
of a phone call."

    "Emotive Communications represents the arrival of
`social' sampling and distribution of ringtones and other
media using mobile devices, a phenomenon of potentially
great import for both content companies and
consumers," said Richard Sarnoff, President of
Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments.

    "We think that the widespread emergence of IP
telecoms is opening new fields of innovation," said
Andre Turenne, a senior vice president at the D. E. Shaw
group. "In our opinion, Emotive is a key innovator at
the point of convergence between multimedia and network
communications."

    "Emotive Communications has created a product that
further advances mobile social networking.  We view our work
with Emotive as an extension of our product innovation
efforts in the digital music space," said Alex
Zubillaga, executive vice president of Digital Strategy and
Business Development, Warner Music Group. 

    About Emotive Communications

    Emotive is an entertainment focused innovation company
that provides real-time interactive multimedia products and
services to network operators and service providers (3/4G
mobile and broadband) worldwide.  The company's "Push
Ringer" product introduces active social media
networking to the network communications industries by
deploying a ring-forward tone for fast IP networks. 
Emotive was founded by the original management of Moviso
(acquired by InfoSpace) who are responsible for creating
and leading the mobile ringtone market and architecting the
mobile content business and wireless copyright exploitation
models in North America.  Emotive is a privately held
company based in Los Angeles, California.  For more
information, visit: http://www.emotive.com 

    About The D. E. Shaw Group

    The D. E. Shaw group is a global investment and
technology development firm.  Since its organization in
1988, the firm has earned an international reputation for
financial innovation, technological leadership, and an
extraordinarily distinguished staff.  The D. E. Shaw group
encompasses a number of closely related entities with more
than 1,000 employees, approximately $29 billion in
aggregate investment capital, and offices in New York,
London, Silicon Valley, Houston, Kansas City, San
Francisco, Washington D.C., Bermuda, and Hyderabad and
Gurgaon, India.

    About Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments (BDMI)

    Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments (BDMI) is a
strategic venture investor focused on innovative digital
media technologies, products and distribution channels
across the globe.  BDMI is a wholly owned subsidiary of
Bertelsmann AG, one of the largest media and entertainment
companies in the world with over $25 billion in revenues. 
With more than 600 individual companies, Bertelsmann AG has
significant interests in all areas of media including
television, music, books, magazines, direct marketing and
media services.  For more information, visit:
http://www.bdmifund.com 

    About Warner Music Group

    Warner Music Group became the only stand-alone music
company to be publicly traded in the United States in May
2005.  With its broad roster of new stars and legendary
artists, Warner Music Group is home to a collection of the
best-known record labels in the music industry including
Asylum, Atlantic, Bad Boy, Cordless, East West, Elektra,
Lava, Maverick, Nonesuch, Reprise, Rhino, Roadrunner,
Rykodisc, Sire, Warner Bros. and Word.  Warner Music
International, a leading company in national and
international repertoire, operates through numerous
international affiliates and licensees in more than 50
countries.  Warner Music Group also includes
Warner/Chappell Music, one of the world's leading music
publishers, with a catalog of more than one million
copyrights worldwide.


    For more information, please contact:

     Mary Stuyvesant 
     Emotive Communications, Inc.
     Tel:   [phone]
     Email: [e-mail]