Capitol Records Recording Artists' Marcy Playground to Offer Fans Who Pre-order Their New Album Via the Internet, the Ability to Download the Entire Album Six Weeks Before It Becomes Available in Stores.

LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 13, 1999--

In a first of its kind online sales initiative, Capitol Records - in association with Electric Artists, Microsoft and amplified.com - announced today that beginning Saturday, September 25th it will offer fans who pre-order Marcy Playground's upcoming release, Shapeshifter, the ability to download all twelve tracks from the album before it becomes available in stores nationwide. Shapeshifter is the follow-up album to the band's self-titled platinum debut, an album that has sold 2 million albums worldwide and produced the hit singles "Sex and Candy" and "Saint Joe on the School Bus."

The sales initiative marks the first time in which a major record company and a platinum selling artist has offered fans an entire album over a 6 week period before street date.

Fans who pre-order Shapeshifter from participating retailers beginning Saturday, September 25th will be allowed to download two tracks each week beginning with the band's first single, It's Saturday. The promotion will run for six weeks ending on Tuesday, November 2nd - the day the album becomes available at retail stores across the country.

Capitol Records is making the ground breaking promotion available to all online retailers, radio stations and their websites. Confirmed retailers include Tower Records, Wherehouse Records, CDNow, Musicland, Transworld, National Record Mart and Virgin. The radio portion of the promotion will offer stations and their websites a contest where Marcy Playground will play for the station who gets the most traffic to the promotion. An updated list of retailers and radio station websites will be available on the Capitol Records website at: http://hollywoodandvine.com/marcyplayground

"Tower Records Online is excited to be participating in the Marcy Playground promotion, as it allows us to offer our customers more than just a new single for download," he said Mike Farrace, VP Worldwide Marketing for Tower Records. "Giving fans the ability to download the entire record, truly brings into focus the new music of Marcy Playground. We think that our customers will be excited to get the record from us digitally over a six week period. It may indeed be a new way for fans to consume music."

To kick-off the event, on Friday, September 24th at a special midnight ET, (9pm PST) timeslot, the band members of Marcy Playground will be chatting with their fans live on the Internet to talk about the launch of their new album. Fans can access the chat, hosted by Launch Media, on both the Launch Media website (www.launch.com) and on Yahoo! (www.chat.yahoo.com)

John Wozniak lead singer for Marcy Playground said "I started my relationship with the Internet in 1979 when I was eight years old. My elementary school (Marcy Open School) had a terminal where I could dial up a mainframe at the University of Minnesota and play weird text-based games with my friends. At that time you had to call the mainframe on the telephone, wait for some beeps, and then attach the phone's handset to an acoustic coupler. Then the computer-which was basically just a really big typewriter-would start churning out text almost as fast as I could read it. It wasn't fast by today's standards, but it was incredibly high tech for the day. That was twenty years ago. I've been hooked up and using the internet in some form ever since. So if there's any question about how I feel about this promotion: the answer is: 'I couldn't be happier.'"

All twelve tracks from Shapeshifter will be made available in Microsoft's Windows Media Technologies 4 format for secure digital downloads.

Tracks will "time-out" on November 2nd, the day the album is in stores. amplified.com, the Internet's leading business-to-business digital music wholesaler, has been selected to provide technical integration for participating online retailers.

Marcy Playground's Shapeshifter carries all the force of their debut yet it shows the band's progression into a fresh and more tantalizing sound. From the power-pop first single "It's Saturday," a song about a kid who miraculously recovers on Saturday from being too sick to go to school on Friday, to the rich sounds of "Bye Bye," to "Pigeon Farm," a live-show favorite that to the excitement of many fans has finally been recorded, Marcy Playground have brought a true treat to music fans everywhere.

For the latest information on Marcy Playground and this promotion stop by the Capitol Records WWW site "Hollywood and Vine" at http://hollywoodandvine.com/marcyplayground