Musicmaker.com and EMI Christian Music Group Announces Launch of WOW Custom CD Promotion; Free New Artist/Music CD On-line Offer For WOW Hits 2001 Customers

Business Wire, Nov 1, 2000

Business & Entertainment Editors

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 1, 2000

Musicmaker.com (NASDAQ NMS: HITS), a leading global custom CD compilation and digital download Internet music company, and EMI Christian Music Group, today launched a custom CD giveaway promotion in conjunction with the retail release of the WOW Hits 2001 compilation album.

The double CD features the year's 30 top Christian artists and hits, including music from Steven Curtis Chapman, Michael W. Smith and Jaci Velasquez.

WOW is an album series created and marketed by EMI Christian Music Group, Word Entertainment and Provident Music Group, three industry leaders in Christian music. The multi-platinum-selling brand, introduced in 1995, is the genre's top-selling series of all time and has become a key representative of the Christian music industry to mainstream retail. Lifetime sales for the entire series are approaching 8 million.

Powered by Musicmaker.com, with the purchase of WOW Hits 2001, customers will be offered a free five-song custom CD of key new artists and music. Consumers can log-on to the co-promotion WOW Hits' official website, www.wow2001.com, sample new music and choose from 20 songs listed. The free customized CD will be shipped to the customer for a $3.99 shipping/handling charge.

"This online partnership is designed to introduce hundreds of thousands of Christian music fans to the tremendous crop of new artists and music our industry has launched over the last year," said Bill Hearn, President and CEO of EMI Christian Music Group. "We have high expectations based on Musicmaker.com's success with similar promotions in the past."

Raju Puthukarai, Musicmaker.com's President and CEO, said "Thanks to Musicmaker.com's close ties to EMI Christian Music Group, our website is already a leading destination for fans of Christian music. Musicmaker.com's existing online catalogue already features many WOW 2001 artists including Steven Curtis Chapman, Rebecca St. James, Bob Carlisle, The Newsboys, DC Talk and BeBe and CeCe Winans." He continued saying, "In addition to introducing many exciting new Christian music artists to WOW's retail buyers, this promotion will allow Christian music fans to discover just how easy it is to make a personalized Custom Musicmaker.com CD on the Internet."

About EMI Christian Music Group

Nashville, Tennessee-based EMI Christian Music Group, a member of EMI Recorded Music, is the world's largest Christian music company, operating the Sparrow, EMI Gospel and Forefront labels in addition to EMI Christian Music Publishing and Chordant Distribution Group.

About Musicmaker.com

Based in NY, Musicmaker.com (www.musicmaker.com), with offices in Reston, VA, is a leading global custom CD compilation and digital download Internet music company. Musicmaker.com offers music lovers the opportunity to build their own CDs by selecting songs from a library of more than 160,000 tracks from over 165 labels in a variety of music genres. The company is publicly traded on the Nasdaq National Market under the symbol HITS.

Certain statements in this press release, including, but not necessarily limited to the statements concerning, expectations based on similar musicmaker.com promotions, the number of Christian fans the WOW promotion is designed to target, the introduction of Christian music fans to new artists and to the ease of making a custom Musicmaker.com CD, the free custom CD feature and other details of the WOW promotion constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results or performance of the Company, to be materially different from any future results or performance indicated or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors include and/or concern, among other things, the Company's limited operating history, the inherent volatility and unpredictability of the stock market generally and of the stock prices of technology companies in particular, the effect of litigation in which the company is involved, uncertainty concerning the content it will be able to obtain under its license agreements with record companies, general economic and business conditions with respect to the Internet and online commerce, Musicmaker.com's ability to obtain music rights and to obtain such rights to music that is in demand by music consumers, potential legal obstacles (such as copyrights and provisions in artist contracts) to obtaining rights to music titles, competition from record labels and other competitors, as well as the risks set forth in the Company's Registration Statement filed on Form S-1 dated as of July 7, 1999 as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K dated December 31, 1999 and risk factors listed from time to time in other SEC filings.