The company is a founding member of the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI), the recording industry's effort to develop an open, secure access system for digital music.
Josh Builder, who joined the Orchard in 2006 and is now chief technology officer, helped developthe company's digital distribution system, which encodes music and videos available on hundreds of outlets around the world.
Simple Audio's world-class engineering and product development teams will continue to develop and market the company's range of music streaming products from its offices in Glasgow, Scotland.
The Oram "Oramics" Synthesiser (sic) was built by Daphne Oram in 1957, a year before she co-founded the BBC Radiophonic Workshop to research and develop electronic music.
On the other hand it is encouraging schools to develop a specialism (eg, technology or music) and is allowing such schools to select up to 10% of their intake by aptitude for the specialist subject.