Access Media Network

Access Media Network (AMN) is a business automation and technology organization unifying speech, music, audio, images and movies with two-way communications. The core definition of the AMN, founded by Dale Burleigh Schalow in 1992, was a premise for consumer-based music access, originally called Accessible Music Network. A new music industry model encompassed three main tiers at its inception: 1) method of travel including cable TV, telephony, satellite and cellular; 2) hardware and software to play music after point-of-purchase; 3) business licensing model to levy single license issue, as well as monthly subscription plans of multiple licenses.

The first demonstration of AMN's SoftPlayer was in 1992 by Schalow at Virgin Records on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California. Soon thereafter Virgin created its highly visible New Media group. Schalow designed a completely self-contained version of AMN using nothing but stand-alone software on the Apple Macintosh to demonstrate how SCSI (small computer serial interface) could be used to implement a new technique called "music-on-demand". It supported AIF/C and QuickTime compression formats at the time. The sound quality was based on current compact disc (CD) standards: 16 bit frames, 44 kHz sampling, stereophonic (2 channels). Subsequent demos followed at BMG, Cablevision, Cox FiberNet, Continental Cable, Jones Intercable, Bell Atlantic, among others. Schalow’s AMN was introduced to Apple Computer through the “I Changed the World” competition using an Apple IIci as the center of one controller-based network after which he received Honorable Mention and an Apple T-shirt.

During Schalow's research, he found many communications and entertainment companies were delivering content over a medium that was undervalued in terms of its interactive bandwidth. At first his self-study of the subject was done at the Beverly Hills Public Library where there were books and reference materials on existing technology but not nearly enough on interactive broadband. From his frustration, he traveled the country meeting with cable, telephone and entertainment developers and executives in Virginia, Research Triangle Park, New York, California, Denver and Pennsylvania discussing broadband theories and the concept of receiving true, instant music-on-demand. The information he received helped push the AMN envelope.

In 1994 Schalow was encouraged by the President of James Madison University to contact DC-area entrepreneurs for additional funding and planning a business incubation period. CACI's CEO acknowledges the technology in 1995 but could not find a fit for its government clients. So in 1995, Schalow’s software was considered for a project for Magnet Interactive Studios (Georgetown). Schalow was hired to lead implementation of new compression technology for a multimedia title called "COMEDIANS: Behind The Laughter" (Magnet Interactive and 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment) where the application was used to squeeze tons of music, sound and 250,000+ SGI animation frames onto a single-sided CD-ROM ($1.2 million budget). It was reviewed by TIME Magazine's Entertainment Weekly as "so cleverly-designed video game programmers would do well to study it" ([1]). Schalow disagreed that CD-ROMs alone would help market AMN over the long-term so another company was considered to help assist.

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