PW: MediaBay Launches New Initiatives

After acquiring a number of companies over the past several years, MediaBay Inc. relaunched its www.mediabay.com e-commerce site as a portal site earlier this year. The redesigned site integrates all the different sites that were part of the companies that MediaBay has acquired. "We can now provide one-stop shopping," noted John Levy, MediaBay's chief financial officer.

The new portal contains an audiobook channel, old time radio channel, classic video channel, newsstand channel and music channel. The audiobook channel offers 72,000 audiobook titles for sale, while the old time radio channel has a searchable database of 59,000 programs. The video channel has more than 3,500 video programs in its database. The newsstand channel offers newspapers, newsletters, magazines and other time-sensitive content for purchase, while the music channel sells old time and current music in CD format. In addition to selling all its products in hard-copy format, MediaBay has been encoding its proprietary and licensed content and has started to offer materials in a digital download format.

Another initiative planned for this year is the launch of a Christian audiobook club. Scheduled to go live before the end of the second quarter, the new club will be promoted both through the Internet and by direct mail. The company is also considering starting a number of other special interest clubs this year in the areas of self-help, mystery, romance and science fiction. "We think growth will come through niche marketing," Levy told PW.

For the first quarter ended March 31, 2000, sales rose 10.1% to $10.9 million, and the company cut its net loss to $665,000 from $3.5 million in the first quarter of 1999. During the quarter, MediaBay made a host of content deals with various partners, including agreements with such audiobook publishers as Brilliance, Hay House, New World Library and Rivertree Productions to sell their titles through digital downloads.

MediaBay also added two new executives earlier this month. Robert Clearly, formerly v-p of operations and administration at Columbia House, has been named executive v-p of operations at MediaBay, and Joanne Rypp Firstenberg has been named executive v-p and general counsel.