Freehand Systems Acquires Sunhawk
July 23, 2003
Freehand Systems, Inc., announced that it has acquired Seattle-based Sunhawk Digital Music LLC, a privately held company with the world's largest collection of digital sheet music titles, for $2 million. The acquisition places Freehand, a privately-held company with the mission of reinventing how musicians read and perform music, as the world leader in digital music technology and largest distributor of digital sheet music song titles. It also offers musicians a seamless experience in searching, purchasing and downloading digital sheet music.
Sunhawk's digital sheet music library consists of over 30,000 music titles. Each title is MIDI-capable and uses Sunhawk's proprietary Solero notational software to enable users to play the selection on an electronic device such as a computer or synthesizer. Sunhawk's catalog includes a wide range of product from classical to Christian to popular music due to its contracts with major publishers like Warner Bros. Publications, Mel Bay, and EMI.
"With 60 million Americans who make or play music, the market potential for this new enterprise is substantial," says Kim Lorz, CEO of Freehand Systems. "Over the next three years, we expect this acquisition to generate $20 million in gross revenue."
The Sunhawk digital music library is on-line at www.sunhawk.com and www.freehandsystems.com .
The MusicPad Pro, a digital sheet music computer tablet, makes teaching music easier, learning music more enjoyable and performing music more fun. Not only does it create a paperless environment by providing storage capacity for an entire music library of more than 5,000 pages of sheet music, it solves the age-old problem of turning music pages by letting musicians simply touch the screen. They also can mark up compositions and write reference notes on the screen using Freehand's proprietary annotation technology.
The sleek new tablet computer is housed in a charcoal grey ABS polymer enclosure not much larger than a sheet of paper. Weighing just under five pounds, it is lightweight and easy to carry, although the MusicPad Pro Plus, which comes with a rechargeable battery, weighs a little more. Without the discounts, suggested retail price for the MusicPad Pro is just $999. The MusicPad Pro Plus, with a battery life of three hours on a single charge, is $1,199.
Both models have a low glare, backlit 12.1 in. TFT LCD display. Key features include zoom in and zoom out capabilities and on-screen color highlighters and pens to add or erase rehearsal marks and notations. Digital music files in pdf, jpg and other popular graphics formats can be directly imported into the MusicPad Pro using the software provided with the device. Printed music can be scanned into a computer and then imported.
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