EMusic, an online monthly subscription music service, and K-NFB Reading Inc., will merge.

The new company will be called Media Arc Inc. and will offer both music and e-books. The companies are trying to provide a multimedia service for customers that includes recommendations on music and books.

K-NFB does business as Blio. It was financially backed by former Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) chief financial officer Michael Brown and media-distribution company Baker & Taylor. The company was founded by Ray Kurzweil, a pioneer in optical character and speech recognition, as well as music synthesizers.

EMusic was once considered a hot startup, with credit for its growth going to David Pakman, who served as CEO for five years. Pakman departed in 2008 for Venrock, the venture capital firm that invests money from the Rockefeller family and where he is still a partner today.

The merger was announced March 18.

Technology