LiveDownloads.com Celebrates the New Year with Three Bands in Three Cities; Ecstatic Fans Able to Download CD-Quality Music Following Live Performances!

Business Wire, Jan 7, 2004

Entertainment Editors

LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 7, 2004

New Year's Eve marked the successful launch of LiveDownloads.com, a premium music download service from the leader in online live music distribution, nugs.net. Within hours of each show, fans of The String Cheese Incident, Yonder Mountain String Band, and The Radiators were able to login into livedownloads.com and download mastered, CD-quality soundboard recordings of each band's New Year's Eve concert.

Yonder Mountain String Band played two sold out nights at Denver's Paramount Theater, while The String Cheese Incident performed three sold out nights at The Auditorium Theater in Chicago. The Radiators performed at B.B. King's Blues Club in New York. All three bands kicked off their live music download programs through LiveDownloads.com, offering complete recordings of each concert. LiveDownloads.com also features five album releases from Yonder Mountain Records, the first record label to release albums as true CD-quality downloads. All music on the site is available in MP3 and CD-quality FLAC formats.

LiveDownloads.com is powered by nugs.net, the music service provider behind the popular free download site of the same name. In 2002 Phish partnered with nugs.net to create the ground-breaking service LivePhish.com which offers downloads of every concert Phish plays within 48 hours of each performance. Brad Serling, nugs.net founder and CEO, says, "Since launching LivePhish.com we've been approached by many artists, but not everyone was ready to launch a private-label service like we had done for Phish. Through LiveDownloads.com, we can empower artists to create a new revenue stream immediately through music downloads without the upfront cost of building their own distribution channels." LivePhish.com, for example, generated over $2.25 million in 2003 and set the precedent for direct band to fan live concert downloads.

Now other artists and fans alike can benefit from LiveDownloads.com's high caliber service. Kevin Morris, president of The String Cheese Incident's record label, adds: "For us, the most appealing aspect to what nugs.net is doing is that it is user friendly. I'm amazed at how easy it is to navigate. On Wednesday, you can download Monday night's show. I think our fans will love it." Casey Verbeck, Yonder Mountain String Band's manager, agrees: "Brad has a really good thing going giving opportunity to artists who may not have the time or resources to set up their own digital download interface. This is the way of the future and we are proud to be working with Brad."

"It's an exciting time for the music industry, and we welcome the opportunity to add more artists, albums, and shows to LiveDownloads.com in 2004," concluded Serling.

ABOUT NUGS.NET

Music service provider nugs.net enterprises offers a turn-key platform for online music distribution. Artist partners and clients include Phish, Yonder Mountain String Band, The String Cheese Incident, The Radiators, Grateful Dead Productions and the Estate of Jerry Garcia. Nugs.net operates livephish.com, livedownloads.com, and a free live music channel at nugs.net. The nugs.net channel delivers over 3 million downloads a month to 250,000 users. Moreover, 50,000 users each month listen to nugs.net radio, a 24/7 stream from nugs.net extensive archives. For more information, visit our website http://nugs.net/ or for media inquiries, please contact via email: calico@nugs.net.