Business Wire
(Copyright (c) 2000, Business Wire)

SEATTLE--(ENTERTAINMENT WIRE)--July 19, 2000--DiscoverMusic.com(SM), the leading provider of song samples for use by internet music retailers, today announced that it has signed license agreements with ASCAP, BMI and SESAC.

"We are pleased to sign license agreements with ASCAP, BMI and SESAC," said David Lambert, President & CEO of DiscoverMusic.com. "These agreements cover DiscoverMusic.com and the use of our sampling service at our customers' web sites."

DiscoverMusic.com streamed over 50 million song samples last month. The company currently offers more than 2.5 million song samples from 190,000 CDs to over 90 internet music sites to promote the sale of music.

DiscoverMusic.com recently announced that it signed license agreements with four major record companies, and has license agreements with more than 700 independent record labels.

"ASCAP is gratified that DiscoverMusic.com and its clients recognize the tremendous value of music samples on the internet by joining over 1500 other sites in taking a comprehensive ASCAP internet performance license," said John LoFrumento, CEO of ASCAP. "We look forward to extending our partnership with DiscoverMusic.com by presenting ASCAP's repertory, the world's largest, to music lovers everywhere."

"Since our first internet license in 1995, BMI has worked with the digital community to make it easy to use copyrighted music and to help create new revenue streams for our affiliates. We are pleased to include DiscoverMusic.com as a new partner in supporting our songwriters' and publishers' rights in the digital space," said Richard Conlon, Vice President, Marketing and Business Development, Media Licensing, BMI.

"SESAC is recognized as the leader in the performing rights industry for introducing and implementing technological process improvements in the areas of song identification and royalty distribution," said Pat Collins, Senior VP, Licensing, of SESAC. "We recognize DiscoverMusic.com as a leader in their field, and we're very pleased to have them as a licensee. With the internet rapidly changing the rules of the entertainment business, forward-thinking partnerships like this one will help, first of all, to ensure that there are rules in place to protect valuable intellectual property, and secondly, to raise the public consciousness about the inherent, lasting value of the copyrights that enrich all of our lives every day."

About DiscoverMusic.com

DiscoverMusic.com has established the standard for music sampling on the internet. The company serves internet music retailers with the world's largest database of song samples, album cover art, and textual data. DiscoverMusic.com has license agreements with BMG Entertainment, EMI Recorded Music, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and with over 700 independent record labels. DiscoverMusic.com's lead investor is Generation Partners, a venture capital firm with over $300 million under management focused on internet and Communications companies such as HotJobs.com, Driveway.com, e-STEEL and Promatory Communications. Microsoft and Akamai are also investors in DiscoverMusic.com.

About ASCAP

Established in 1914, ASCAP is the world's largest performing rights organization, with more than 95,000 active composers, lyricist and music publisher members. ASCAP is committed to protecting the rights of its members by licensing and collecting royalties for the public performance of their copyrighted works, and then distributing these fees to the Society's members based on performances. ASCAP's repertory spans the entire spectrum of music -- from pop to symphonic, rock to gospel, Latin to country to jazz, rhythm and blues, theater, film and television music. A Board of Directors governs ASCAP and is made up solely of composers, writers and publishers, elected by the membership.

About BMI

Founded in 1940, BMI is an U.S. performing rights organization that represents the copyright interests of more than 250,000 songwriters, composers and music publishers in all genres of music. BMI introduced the first music performance copyright agreement in the music industry in 1995 and continues to introduce innovations in the field of copyright protection today. Since announcing the expansive Horizon Project in 1999, BMI has opened its Digital Licensing Center for online web licensing, released a 2.0 version of its web robot `Music Bot' and completed a Watermarking Field Trial initiative. Some of the many web sites licensed by BMI include EMusic.com, MP3.com, Licensemusic.com, Artist Direct Network, Yahoo Broadcast, Rolling Stone online, Countrycool.com, Eritmo.com and Spinner.com.

About SESAC

SESAC, founded in 1930, is the second oldest and fastest growing of the nation's performing rights companies. Their primary purpose is to present an efficient and effective method to obtain required permission to perform copyrighted music through licensing the musical works of songwriters and publishers. SESAC today stands as the clear technological leader among the nation's performing rights organizations, utilizing Broadcast Data Systems and MusiCode encryption software to provide its affiliates with incomparable accuracy and consistency in performance detection over any medium, including the internet (www.sesac.com).