SONIC FOUNDRY, SOUNDBREAK
GO TO THE WELL

It pays to make a big Internet playyou can bank on it. At least that’s what Sonic Foundry and Soundbreak.com are doing.

In separate announcements, multimedia developer Sonic Foundry and interactive Webcaster Soundbreak.com said they raised $18.5 and $19 million, respectively, in private-placement financing. In the case of already-public Sonic Foundry (AMEX: SFO), the nice chunk o’ change includes “promotional consideration” and alliances with Time Warner’s Warner Bros. Online and Entertaindom.com. Sonic will use the proceeds to expand its media services unit, while providing software and media deployment technology to Entertaindom and WB Online, which will also use Sonic’s consulting and training services in its effort to migrate traditional media to the Web.

Soundbreak.com, a pre-IPO company incubated by Pasadena, CA-based Acacia Research (Nasdaq: ACRI), is among the first Webcasters to use live DJs (that’s digital jocks) and positions itself as a “music-lifestyle destination targeting Generation I” (i.e. the first generation of Internet users, or a15-35-year-old demo). Soundbreak’s additional $19 million comes on top of earlier rounds of financing which raised $7.5 million.

According to a source, all that money will help the two companies achieve their operational and marketing goals, “just so long as they don’t get swelled heads about it or squander it on fast women.”