Stocks to Watch: Loud Eyes Drilling for Dollars

Start eyeing-up the stock price movements of Seattle-based Loudeye Corp. [LOUD]. Loudeye is a digital music provider that boasts a very impressive array of products, services, and qualities, including: being the industry's foremost provider of digital files; having the world's largest commercial music archive in .WAV format (over 4.6 million songs); having the most scalable and advanced media operations facility in the industry; having the industry's leading private labeled digital music solutions; having a dominant digital music samples service ( to the tune of one billion music samples online last year ); a piracy protection service involved in protecting over 75,000 digital entertainment titles (far more than anyone else) and at 99% effectiveness; and, boasting the first wireless digital music services (which were provided to AT&T Wireless [T] and Nokia [NOK]). In Q4 2004, Loudeye announced that it will be providing digital media and content management services to the Music Choice music network. Earlier this year, it announced that its OD2 services have launched a customized digital music store for Migros Electronics, one of Switzerland's largest retailers.

Earlier this year, the company appointed Michael A. Brochu as president and CEO. Brochu has formerly acted as president and COO of Sierra On-Line Inc., and during that tenure he led Sierra's better-than-300% growth in revenues which culminated in the sale of Sierra On-Line to CUC International for $1.1 billion in 1996. Brochu is convinced that Loudeye "has developed a unique position" in the "transformative shift affecting the global digital media" world that shall "help create value for retail partners, content owners, consumers, and our stockholders."