ARTISTdirect Inc. Announces Strategic Relationships With Leading Media Companies Including $97.5 Million in Equity Investments.Business & Entertainment Editors ENCINO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 5, 2000 Universal Music Group, BMG BMG Bundesministerium für Gesundheit (Germand: Federal Ministry for Health) BMG Be My Girl BMG Blue Man Group BMG Bertelsmann Music Group BMG Be My Guest BMG Browning Machine Gun BMG Bulk Metallic Glass Entertainment, Sony Music Entertainment Sony Music Entertainment is a major global record label controlled by the Sony Corporation. In 1988, Sony Corporation acquired CBS Records, Inc. for $2 billion. CBS Inc., now CBS Corporation, retained the rights to the CBS name, and Sony renamed the label , Warner Music Group Warner Music Group (WMG) is one of the four major record labels. Warner Music Group also has a publishing arm, Warner/Chappell Music, which dates back to 1929, when Jack Warner, president of Warner Bros. Pictures Inc. , Cisneros Television Group and Yahoo! Inc. Acquire Stakes in ARTISTdirect Inc. ARTISTdirect Inc., a leading online music company that provides music entertainment through the ARTISTdirect Network, today announced that it had entered into separate strategic relationships with, and received $97.5 million in equity investments from, six leading music and media companies. ARTISTdirect has entered into separate and independent licensing, marketing and/or distribution agreements with Universal Music Group, BMG Entertainment, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group to expand the content available on the ARTISTdirect Network and to promote popular musical artists across a wide variety of genres. Cisneros Television Group, the leading pay television content provider in Latin America, has also entered into a strategic relationship with ARTISTdirect, including an equity investment. ARTISTdirect also announced that Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO YHOO Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ symbol) ), a leading global Internet media company serving 105 million users, has taken a minority equity stake in the company. The ARTISTdirect Network (www.artistdirect.com) is an integrated network of Web sites offering multimedia content, music news and information, community around shared music interests, and music-related commerce. The ARTISTdirect Network consists of ARTISTdirect.com (www.artistdirect.com), home of the online channels that the company operates and maintains on behalf of artists; UBL (Universal Business Language) A format for exchanging data from one XML business language to another. Based on ebXML Core Components, UBL is designed to provide a common language that acts as an intermediate vocabulary so that one XML vocabulary can interoperate with .com (www.ubl.com), a leading music search engine on the Web; iMusic (www.imusic.com), an online community site where fans exchange music interests and commentary; and the ARTISTdirect Superstore, a retail site offering a wide selection of recorded music and artist merchandise. Additionally, ARTISTdirect Inc. operates the ARTISTdirect Talent Agency and manages ARTISTdirect Recordings. About BMG Entertainment: BMG Entertainment (www.bmg.com) is the $4.6 billion worldwide music and entertainment division of Bertelsmann AG, one of the world's leading media companies, with annual revenues of $15 billion. BMG owns more than 200 record labels in 53 countries, including Arista Records, RCA Records and Ariola Music. BMG has significant online interests, including a popular online music community called GetMusic (www.getmusic.com), which is a joint venture with Universal Music Group. BMG also owns the world's largest music club and one of the world's largest music publishing companies, and also has interests in television, and compact disc and cassette manufacturing. About Cisneros Television Group: Cisneros Television Group (CTG CTG Cartridge CTG Center for Technology in Government (SUNY, Albany, New York) CTG Center for Technology in Government CTG Computer Task Group (IT consulting company; Buffalo, NY, USA) ), a member of the Cisneros Group of Companies, is focused on the creation of entertainment brands throughout the world. The Cisneros Group of Companies has ownership interests in a number of global media, entertainment and Internet companies, including a 50% equity interest in AOL (A division of Time Warner, Inc., New York, NY, www.aol.com) The world's largest online information service with access to the Internet, e-mail, chat rooms and a variety of databases and services. Latin America and an interest in El Sitio. CTG's holdings include HTV HTV H-II Transfer Vehicle HTV Harlech Television (Wales, UK) HTV Hrvatska Televizija (Croatian television) HTV Heidenheimer Tarifverbund (German) HTV Habitual Traffic Violator , the Latin music television channel with distribution throughout the United States, Latin America, Europe and Asia; MuchMusic Argentina, the No. 1 music television channel in Argentina, which is distributed throughout Latin America via DIRECTV, as well as the rights to develop MuchMusic franchises throughout Iberoamerica. In a partnership with AEI AEI American Enterprise Institute AEI Archive of European Integration AEI Australian Education International AEI Automotive Engineering International AEI Australian Education Index AEI Albert Einstein Institute Music, CTG has created AEI Music Latin America to provide music services to pay television platforms and retailers throughout the region. CTG also owns Infinito (a documentary channel), Space (a 24-hour movie channel), Jupiter Comic (Latin America's only comedy channel), I-Sat (a movie channel geared to a younger audience) and Uniseries (which shows popular dramatic weekly television series from the United States and abroad); Locomotion locomotion Any of various animal movements that result in progression from one place to another. Locomotion is classified as either appendicular (accomplished by special appendages) or axial (achieved by changing the body shape). (TM), a 24-hour animation channel with Hearst Corporation, Playboy TV Latin America and Spice, with Playboy Enterprises Inc., as well as Playboy TV International, a joint venture to create Playboy(TM)-branded channels worldwide. Cisneros Television Group in Argentina and the Southern Cone countries also distributes five other channels, including the successful news network Cronica, and owns one of Latin America's largest and most important film libraries. About Sony Music Entertainment: Sony Music Entertainment (SME (1) (Small and Medium-sized Enterprise) See SMB. (2) (Subject Matter Expert) An individual who is well-versed in the policies and procedures of a particular department or division. ), a leading global producer, manufacturer and marketer of recorded music and video, has a presence in 60 countries. In the past year alone, SME has aggressively expanded its online presence with key investments in such leading online companies as AudioBase, Digital On-Demand, Exactis, Intertainer, LAUNCH Media, Listen.com, OnRadio, Platform.net, Quintus, Spinner.com, TalkCity and Yupi.com. The company has also acquired leading e-mail publishers InfoBeat and EMAZING.com. About Warner Music Group: Warner Music Group is home to some of the world's leading record companies, including The Atlantic Group, Elektra Entertainment Group, Rhino Entertainment, Sire Records Group and Warner Bros. Records Warner Bros. Records Inc. is an American record label that operates as a wholly owned subsidiary of Warner Music Group. It is internationally known as WEA International Inc. Inc. The company's Warner Music International, with a roster of more than 1,000 artists, operates in 65 countries through a network of 47 affiliates, 24 licensees and seven associated labels. Warner Music Group also includes one of the world's leading music publishers, Warner/Chappell and WEA WEA Weather WEA World Evangelical Alliance WEA Washington Education Association WEA Wilderness Education Association WEA Workers' Education Association WEA WebSphere Everyplace Access (IBM) WEA Wisconsin Education Association Inc., which comprises three companies: WEA Corp., WEA Manufacturing and Ivy Hill. Warner Music Group is a division of Time Warner Inc. About Universal Music Group: Universal Music Group is the world's leading music company with wholly owned record operations or licensees in 59 countries around the world. Its businesses also include Universal Music Publishing Group Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG) is a music publishing company and is part of the Universal Music Group. It is one of the world's largest music publishing businesses. UMPG owns or administers more than 1 million copyrights. , one of the industry's largest global music publishing operations. Universal Music Group consists of record labels A&M, Blue Thumb, DeccaRecord Co., Def Jam, Deutsche Grammophon, Geffen, GRP GRP Group GRP Group (file name extension) GRP Glass Reinforced Plastic GRP Gastrin-Releasing Peptide (biology) GRP Gross Rating Point (advertising) , Impulse!, Interscope, Island, MCA MCA in full Music Corporation of America Entertainment conglomerate. It was founded in Chicago in 1924 by Jules Stein as a talent agency. In the 1960s it bought Decca Records and Universal Pictures, and today it produces films, music, and television shows. , MCA Nashville, Mercury, Mercury Nashville, Motown, Philips, Polydor, Universal and Verve, as well as a multitude of record labels owned or distributed by its record company subsidiaries around the world. Universal Music Group is a unit of The Seagram Co. Ltd., a global entertainment and spirits and wine company. |
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