AOL Music and BeatGreets Announce Exclusive Online Promotion Pact

Business Wire, Oct 29, 2001

Business Editors

NEW YORK & DULLES, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 29, 2001

BeatGreets Innovative Music Greetings to Enhance AOL's Extensive

Line-up of Online Music Offerings

New Relationship Expands Promotional Opportunities for More Than

75 Label Partners and Tens of Millions of Music Fans on AOL

America Online, the world's leading interactive services company, and BeatGreets, the largest supplier of interactive music greetings, announced today that they are entering into a relationship that will give AOL exclusive rights to integrate and promote the growing selection of online music greeting cards from BeatGreets. This new relationship with BeatGreets will enrich AOL Music's existing range of online music offerings by adding a dynamic way for fans to send visual cards with music from their favorite artists along with a personal message. In addition to broadening members' ability to discover and experience music online, the relationship expands opportunities for labels and artists to expose their music and connect with fans in a new and unique way.

As part of this agreement, AOL will integrate BeatGreets' extensive array of music greeting cards throughout the AOL Music channel (AOL Keyword: Music). Select content from BeatGreets will also be offered on AOL's Web properties, including AIM, Netscape and ICQ.

BeatGreets, which is part of the AmericanGreetings.com family of Web sites, offers greetings that enable online music fans to send friends and family electronic cards containing mini-music videos. BeatGreets are the only music video-style online greetings and feature the work of over 240 artists, 150 of which are platinum recording artists. BeatGreets has more than 20 exclusive contracts with record labels. Featured artists include Alicia Keys, Enya, Sugar Ray and Weezer, and the types of music span all genres from Pop to Reggae.

"Music and e-mail are two of the most popular activities for AOL members. Our new relationship with BeatGreets brings the two together in a truly unique way that benefits AOL members, Web music fans and our music partners," said Kevin Conroy, senior vice president and head of AOL Music. "BeatGreets' greetings offer online music fans a fun, interactive experience as they find music and artists they love and share their favorites with friends. By incorporating this offering within AOL, we are able to expand the ways in which we create lasting connections between labels, artists and tens of millions of online music fans coming to AOL and our Web music properties."

Nancy Levin, president of BeatGreets said, "We had resisted partnering with anyone for two years as we focused on this music-artist-celebrity-driven force. Now that we have the proven success and confidence of the artists, labels and consumers, there is just no question that our exclusive partner should be the team at AOL Music - with the expertise they've developed reaching an audience of more than 30 million members and millions of online music fans."

"From the start BeatGreets has enabled us to expose a wide variety of artists in a way that's fun and interactive for consumers," said Eric Fritschi, vice president, marketing, Warner Bros. Records. "Musical greetings are an important part of our fan outreach program as we become more sophisticated in one-to-one direct marketing. With the explosive increase in exposure resulting from this AOL partnership, I'm confident that BeatGreets will become an even more integral part of our marketing plans."

"BeatGreets' creative presentations give us a unique way of marketing our artists and give their fans the chance to show their support and spread the word about the music," said Monte Lipman, president, Universal Records. "Our VP of New Media, Erin Yasgar, has been on top of BeatGreets since day one. Artists like Nelly, Godsmack and Afroman, to name a few, have reached consumers we would not have been able to reach through traditional avenues. With this new relationship between AOL and BeatGreets, we know that we will get even more of Universal Records music into the hands of more fans."

Currently featured on AOL's Music channel (AOL Keyword: Music), members can send BeatGreets greetings from such top-name artists as Alicia Keys, blink-182, Diana Krall, Missy Elliott, Melissa Etheridge, Faith Hill, Whitney Houston, Ja Rule, Jay-Z, Lee Ann Womack, Mary J. Blige, Outkast, Ray J, Shaggy, Sugar Ray and Enrique Iglesias. Members can also conveniently access BeatGreets' entire music greeting card collection at AOL Keyword: BeatGreets.

About AmericanGreetings.com and BeatGreets

AmericanGreetings.com is the online greetings and personal expression subsidiary of American Greetings Corporation (NYSE: AM). AmericanGreetings.com is one of the world's top 10 Web sites with more than 17 million monthly unique visitors, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. Through partnerships with AOL, MSN and Yahoo!, AmericanGreetings.com (AOL Keyword: AG) and its affiliates reach 80 percent of all Web users. It offers the largest creative selection available on the Web. Along with its flagship site, AmericanGreetings.com operates BlueMountain.com, which is an online pioneer and one of the Internet's most recognizable names; the Egreetings Network, which is the exclusive greetings provider for the Microsoft Network; and BeatGreets, which features musical greetings from more than 200 artists.