A couple of college students from Montana dropped out of the University here in Bozeman and developed an audio player called Sonique, which they just sold to Lycos for.... well, here's a quote from the local front page news.

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Ian Lyman and Andrew McCann, both 23, took this formula all the way to the bank last week when the company they started in their spare time, Media Science Inc., landed the two a $39 million-plus deal with Internet giant Lycos.

Friends since their sophomore year in high school at Billings, Lyman and McCann developed Sonique, a software program capable of playing near-CD-quality music recordings found on the Internet. They dropped out of Montana State University in Bozeman and relied on skills they taught themselves dabbling with computers. McCann, who firs began programing computers at age 8 or 9, said he didn't encounter until his second or third year at MSU a computer language known as "C," which he had taught himself as a kid.

The design and visual effects of Sonique really set it aside from the scads of other MP3 players. Its sound is also a grade above most others.

Many players simply look like the control panel of a car stereo, with play, forward, reverse and volume buttons. They include the graphic equalizer bars that read the music like a cardiograph in an emergency room.
Sonique, on the other hand, features an array of artistic designs capable of filling an entire computer screen. The designs pulse with the beat of the music.

Sonique's control buttons are mounted to a template that can resemble a futuristic pocket video game, or a dual-faced pocket compass, among other shapes.

Nicholas Vinen, a software developer from Sydney, Australia, who first met McCann on the Internet through programming competitions roughly five years ago, but never face to face before May, cooks up visual art to complement music played on Sonique. At 21, he's won awards for mathematics and physics and worked on computer sounds and graphics for eight years.
Missing from the lineup is Tony Million, a Brit who with McCann developed the decoder that turns the numerical code of MP3 into music on Sonique's player. His decoding system is touted as having the best audio reproduction quality in the world.

Million, also, was a longtime online acquaintance of Lyman and McCann's, whom they didn't actually meet in person until January, when they brought him to Bozeman and put him to work full time on Sonique.

Aside from a relentless zeal for computer technology, they all share one other thing in common: They are college dropouts.
Vinen explained that college didn't seem worth the hassle after educators in Australia told him he had to begin school in entry-level computer classes before he could take the classes he wanted. He said he was already familiar with the contents of the first several required courses.