Mercora is a social music network based in Silicon Valley, California. Mercora allows Internet users to search and listen to a digital radio network of over three million songs, express their musical identity via a customizable profile page, and webcast music to friends, family, and other Mercora users.

Mercora's mission is to catalogue and organize the world's music and make it universally searchable and legally listenable. Mercora is free.

Mercora was founded in 2003 by Srivats Sampath, president and CEO. Before founding Mercora, Srivats Sampath was co-founder and president of McAfee.com, vice president of server product marketing at Netscape, and president and CEO of Discussions Corporation.

Mercora allows music lovers to express their musical identity to friends and family via a customizable profile page. Users can create musical profiles, upload digital pictures, and listen to and webcast their favorite artists. By webcasting, users can share their music with friends, family, and other Mercora users worldwide.

A Mercora user can discover new music by viewing recent searches, listening to webcasts, exploring hot mixes, or browsing the profiles and collections of other Mercora users. A user can also search for artist biographies, discographies, reviews, images, and podcasts. Mercora users can also communicate and share their musical tastes via charts, messaging, and chat.

At present, Mercora's catalogue contains over three million unique songs. The songs are streaming only (no downloads) and free. Mercora's catalogue includes over 200,000 individual artists across all music genres from alternative to dance, rock to hip hop, and classical to jazz.

At present, Mercora offers two options for Internet users:

If a Mercora user simply wants to listen to music, he can search the Mercora network via web browser and click on a song link to listen. No software download is required.

Additionally, if a Mercora user also wants to webcast his music to other Mercora users, he can download a software client that webcasts music from his personal music collection to other Mercora users worldwide. This software client contains no adware or spyware, will not interfere with other music players, and is free.

The Mercora M mobile music service provides users with wireless access to the Mercora network. Mercora M users can search and listen to a digital radio network of over three million unique songs and 200,000 individual artists. Mercora M also provides:

• 100,000 channels of digital radio
• Over-the-air access to the music library on the PC
• Access to friends' music collections
• Stereo Bluetooth support via A2DP profiles

IM Radio Mobile offers support for any Windows Mobile 5.0-based Smartphone or Pocket PC phone with Wi-Fi, GSM or GPRS (3G) connectivity. Windows Mobile 5.0-certified devices include the Motorola Q, Palm Treo 700w and Smartphone and Pocket PC phones by Hewlett-Packard, HTC, i-mate, Siemens, Samsung, and Audiovox.

Mercora IM Artist Program is intended for independent artists and bands that want to increase promotion and publicity for their music. As a member of the IM Artist program, participating artists receive:

• Five music channels webcasting to Mercora users worldwide
• "Now Playing" profile with artist pictures, biography, and discography
• Website links to purchase CDs, merchandise, tickets, and more
• Communicate with fans and listeners via artist forums and chat

The IM Artist program is currently in beta and free.

With the release of Mercora IM Radio v5, Mercora enables users to sign in via their existing instant messaging (IM) identity. At the present time, Mercora supports the following IM systems:

• AOL Instant Messenger
• Google Talk
• ICQ
• MSN Hotmail
• Yahoo!

After authenticating a new user, Mercora will automatically import the user's friends from his IM friends list. Next, the user can invite his friends to join Mercora via a one-step process.

Mercora Madwords is a contextual advertising system that enables advertisers to target text placements by artist or music genre. The text placements are displayed in the "Sponsored Links" section of a webpage upon a search for artist or genre (such as "Coldplay" or "Alternative"). In some ways, this system is similar to Google AdWords.

Madwords enables advertisers to sign up directly via a credit card and is priced on a pay per click (PPC) basis. Advertisers can create and upload their text ads, select their targeting criteria, set their budget and PPCs, and view statistics and reports via a password-protected webpage.

Mercora search boxes enable consumers to search and listen to music from websites and blogs. Website and blog operators can customize the search box to incorporate their desired color scheme, size, logo, and preferred artists (such as "Radiohead"). Consumers can search for artists and listen from a separate browser window.

Mercora Music iFrames enable consumers to view a subset of songs available from a particular artist and click a song to listen. The list of songs is dynamically generated and updated every 60 seconds. There is also a 'more' option if the consumer desires to listen to a song that is not currently displayed within the Music iFrame. Clicking the 'more' button displays a full list of songs available from a particular artist.

Similar to Mercora Search Boxes, website and blog operators can customize the Music iFrame to incorporate their desired color scheme, size, logo, and preferred artists.

Mercora IMRadio v5 requires Windows 2000/XP/2003 Server and a broadband Internet connection. In order to support webcasting, audio files must be in Vorbis, MP3, or WMA formats. The application has a file size of 2.53MB.

In 2006, Mercora expects to migrate to a browser-based model which will enable support for the Mac and Linux platforms.

At present, Mercora still has several areas for improvement. While the Vorbis-powered audio streaming technology offers very good sound quality, it can also result in periodic buffering issues.

Secondly, since the majority of Mercora users are from the U.S., Canada, and Western Europe, there is a greater selection of popular music from Western countries and comparatively lesser amount from Middle Eastern and Eastern countries.

• AOL Radio, a similar service by Time-Warner.
• LAUNCHcast, a similar service by Yahoo! Music.
• MySpace, a social network by News Corporation.

• Mercora to Debut Mobile Music Service, ABCNews.com, September 26, 2006
• Mercora Radio 2.0 Alpha, ABCNews.com, May 16, 2006
• Mercora, NME Ink Radio Deal, MP3.com, April 26, 2006
• Tiscali Partners with Mercora to Launch Tiscali Free Jukebox, TransWorldNews, April 26, 2006
• Mercora IMRadio for Google Talk, PC Magazine, November 14, 2005

• 2006 DEMOfall Award
• TIME.com 50 Coolest Websites for 2005
• BusinessWeek's Best of the Web

• Mercora Official Website
• Tiscali UK Jukebox Website
• Tiscali Italy Jukebox Website
• Mercora Webcasts Directory