Riffage.com Acquires San Francisco's Great American Music Hall; Historic San Francisco Venue Enters the Digital Age as Riffage.com's Premier Concert and Webcasting Facility

Business Wire, May 31, 2000

Business/Entertainment Editors & High-Tech/Music Writers

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(ENTERTAINMENT WIRE)--May 31, 2000

Riffage.com, the Net's leading destination for people who want a personalized music experience, today announced that it has acquired San Francisco's legendary music venue, The Great American Music Hall. The purchase plays a key role in the strategy behind Riffage Live, Riffage.com's recently announced division dedicated to producing cross-media live performance and programming opportunities for major and independent artists. As one of the oldest music halls of its kind in the United States, Riffage.com will maintain the legacy that has made The Great American Music Hall continuously popular among artists and music fans over the past century, while outfitting it with state-of-the-art webcasting capabilities so that performances can be enjoyed by fans around the globe via the Internet.

Riffage.com will continue to operate the hall as a traditional concert venue, in addition to providing artists the opportunity to webcast and archive their performances on Riffage Live's Internet programming site at http://live.riffage.com. Already, the venue served as the stage for the company's "Riffage Live from The Great American Music Hall" indie-artist concert and TV series, currently airing on the popular Burly Bear college cable TV network and as archived programming.

Riffage.com plans to retain the venue's seasoned staff and management team, which has successfully overseen artist bookings, special event rentals, catering, ticket and merchandise sales and concert promotion for many years. Riffage.com will operate the venue under the direction of Jason Rubinstein, vice president and general manager of Riffage.com's Riffage Live division, with Tony Caparelli, a 20 year Great American Music Hall veteran, providing day-to-day management.

"Riffage.com is very excited to announce the acquisition of the historic Great American Music Hall as the premier concert venue for our Riffage Live division," said Ken Wirt, CEO and founder of Riffage.com. "Musicians and Bay Area music fans have long recognized this legendary concert hall as the place to go for performances by famed and, many times, breakthrough artists. Riffage.com will continue to present San Francisco with top-quality live performers, but will take it several steps further by adding state-of-the-art digital production capabilities and networking, so fans worldwide can also enjoy and discover our featured entertainers through the Internet."

"Riffage.com has quickly carved a reputation among fans and artists as a top music company within the emerging digital music space," said Claire Brouwer, former president of the Great American Music Hall. "The company's decision to acquire The Great American Music Hall enables a tremendous opportunity for the venue to continue to play an historic and trend-setting role in the music entertainment industry, just as it has for the past four decades."

About San Francisco's Great American Music Hall

San Francisco's oldest and grandest nightclub, The Great American Music Hall, first opened its doors in 1907, shortly after the city's devastating 1906 earthquake, as a music and dance hall named Blancos. The 5,000 square-foot venue was a display of pure elegance with its ornate balconies, soaring marble columns and elaborate ceiling frescos. At that time, the establishment offered fine food and gambling, right up until the dark days of the Great Depression in 1933. Over the next 30 years, the concert hall re-opened and closed its doors passing through several changes of ownership. In 1972, the venue re-opened as "The Great American Music Hall" and quickly established itself as a world-class music venue that appealed to a variety of artists.

Over the past decades, The Great American Music Hall has played host to a wide variety of popular musical artists including: Carlos Santana, Duke Ellington, Van Morrison, The Grateful Dead, George Clinton & Parliament-Funkadelic, Etta James, Dave Matthews and many more. Both the outstanding acoustics and unique character of the venue have led a number of famous artists, such as The Grateful Dead and Betty Carter, to select the hall for the recording of live concert albums. Its showcase interior has also served as the backdrop for numerous TV broadcasts for HBO, Showtime, MTV and other television specials, staring comedy headliners such as Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg and Bob "Bobcat" Goldthwaite.

For more information regarding The Great American Music Hall, please visit http://www.musichallsf.com.

About Riffage.com

Riffage.com is a leading online music destination, recognized industry-wide for its unique way of connecting artists and fans on the basis of personal musical taste. With state-of-the-art communications, live programming, community features and e-commerce, Riffage.com delivers a powerful forum for discovering both indie and popular music in a format that's compelling, personalized and easy-to-use. Through its Riffage Live division, the company delivers live and on-demand webcast programming from major music events across the globe and co-produces the "Riffage Live from the Great American Music Hall" indie-artist TV showcase, broadcasted over the Burly Bear college TV network and online at http://live.riffage.com. Company investors include AOL, Bertelsmann Ventures, BMG Entertainment, Mayfield Fund and TransCosmos USA.