MusicNow Revolutionizes the Concert Experience With Vans Warped Tour Digital

"MusicNow is transforming the music experience. By providing customized digital music stores programmed around a concert tour, MusicNow empowers artists to fulfill the demand for recorded music created by their live performances, and provides fans with easy and entertaining access to the music they really want." Commercial albums by Vans Warped Tour artists who have appeared over the past ten years will be added throughout the summer, as well. In order to ensure that Vans Warped Tour fans never have to shop for digital music at any other site, users of the Vans Warped Tour Digital Music Club will also be able to search, browse and shop from MusicNow's entire catalog of 500,000 tracks. "The Vans Warped Tour has always been a platform for the best current and upcoming artists and for bringing them closer to the fans," said Kevin Lyman, founder of the Vans Warped Tour. "Our goal in 2004 is to implement a number of new, music-oriented programs that are more closely aligned with the digital lifestyle of today's music fans. Our partnership with MusicNow will help keep the concert scene strong for many years to come." The offering will consist of a Vans Warped Tour branded and programmed download store and a corresponding subscription service. The store will enable all fans to purchase individual tracks for $.99 and entire albums for $9.99. The service will offer members unlimited streaming and conditional downloads of individual tracks, entire albums and playlists made exclusively by Vans Warped Tour artists for Vans Warped Tour fans. Membership will be $9.99 per month. In addition, MusicNow will have $10 Download cards available for purchase at all of the 48 Vans Warped Tour venues and at participating Vans retail stores throughout the country.

The MusicNow Platform The Vans Warped Tour is taking advantage of the MusicNow Digital Music Club, a product built on the MusicNow Platform and designed especially to empower musicians to interact directly with their fans online. The MusicNow Platform includes front-end interface design, back-end infrastructure and licenses from major and independent labels necessary to distribute music online. It has been selected by leading companies such as Best Buy, Charter Communications, Circuit City, Microsoft, SBC Internet Services and Synacor. The MusicNow team manages the complete digital music commerce solution, including licensing, content aggregation, development of unique customer interfaces, reporting/intelligence sharing, customer care and billing. The MusicNow Platform includes:

MusicNow Download Store The MusicNow Platform's download store is accessible from within the Windows Media Player 9 Series, enabling consumers to purchase content, burn it to CD and transfer it to more than 70 portable digital media players from manufacturers including Creative, Rio, iRiver and MPIO.

MusicNow Network of Channels The MusicNow Network enables consumers to play unlimited songs, accumulating larger digital music collections at a lower cost and giving them access to unique entertainment features -- 40 channels of original music programming including the co-branded channels "Elvis 2nd to None," "The Soul of Quincy Jones" and the "Blue Note Channel."

The Vans Warped Tour Download Store powered by MusicNow will be available for the festival's 10th anniversary at http://www.warpedtour.com and http://www.fuse.tv starting June 24.

About MusicNow

MusicNow LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Circuit City Stores Inc., manages the software and systems that cover every aspect of music content aggregation and delivery, including content acquisition and management, media storage, secure delivery and digital rights management to ensure that all rights holders are fairly compensated for their work. MusicNow operates a legal online music store and service with more than 40 channels of original music programming and content from all five major labels -- BMG, EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and the Warner Music Group -- as well as hundreds of independent labels. Consumers have the option to either purchase tracks and albums a la carte via MusicNow's download stores or subscribe to MusicNow's subscription service, which provides unlimited access to the music in MusicNow's library for a monthly subscription fee. The company is headquartered in Chicago, with offices in Palo Alto, CA. For more information or to subscribe to MusicNow, please visit http://www.musicnow.com .

About Vans Warped Tour

2004 marks the 10th anniversary of the VANS WARPED TOUR, America's longest-running touring festival. Over the last decade, the tour has persevered through the ups and downs of the music industry and helped break many up-and-coming bands by holding true to its independent spirit and punk rock mentality. In addition to featuring cutting edge musical artists, the tour also includes top athletes in the action sports world. Over 500,000 tickets were sold for the 2003 tour. The VANS WARPED TOUR has been called: "the summer's best bargain" (Rolling Stone, July 4, 2002), "a show of overwhelming force" (Rolling Stone, August 7, 2003), "a communal gathering, a place where mutual respect among bands, whether noisy unknowns on a side stage or platinum-selling pioneers on the big one, creates a backyard barbecue atmosphere" (Los Angeles Times, July 10, 2003) and was chosen as the "Best Concert" in the Alternative Press 2002 Readers' Poll. The UK's Kerrang! (July 27, 2002) hailed the tour as "punk rock's biggest and best tour," while the Hollywood Reporter (July 12, 2002) lauded it as "the blueprint of how to run a successful music festival" and Guitar World (July 2002) called it "the greatest punk rock show on earth." For more information on the Vans Warped Tour visit http://www.warpedtour.com .