"Musicmaker.com (HITS) Creates Business Development Unit For Gift Sales"
New Marketing Group Launches Valentine's Day Gift Giving Site as First Holiday and Occasion Custom CD Sales Offering
NEW YORK, Jan. 20 /PRNewswire/ -- Musicmaker.com (Nasdaq: HITS) today announced they are creating a series of initiatives to enhance the manner in which they market customized CDs and downloadable music. Their first initiative will be the creation of a holiday and occasional sales gift-giving unit. This thrusts musicmaker.com into the increasingly lucrative online gift-giving sales business, which grew from a $650 million market in 1997 to a $4 billion market in 1999 and is expected to be a $17 billion market by 2004 (Forrester Research).
Musicmaker.com's creation of a holiday and occasional sales unit will enhance musicmaker.com's ease-of-use for consumers and further establish them as a gift-giving destination, in essence, becoming the Hallmark(TM) of online music. Their first initiative launches with Valentine's Day and will continue with other sites that offer personalized custom compilations and digital downloads specific to all holidays and occasions, including Mother's Day, Christmas, birthdays and anniversaries.
As part of their new marketing initiative, musicmaker.com will begin offering special pricing in the holiday and occasional sales section, starting with Valentine's Day with 5 songs for just $4.95 and $1.00 for each additional song, instead of their usual price of 5 songs for $9.95 customers can sample tracks before buying and can write a personal message to their Valentine that is printed on the CD booklet. CDs can include up to 20 tracks or 70 minutes of music.
"This is what musicmaker.com is all about," says musicmaker.com president and CEO Raju Puthukarai. "We are in the business of empowering music fans with the ability to produce their own albums that best suit their needs for gift-giving or personal satisfaction, using a system that makes their visit to musicmaker.com an easy and satisfying experience. We hope the gift-givers of the world will take advantage of this unique opportunity."
For Valentine's Day, the site will feature a section devoted completely to Valentine's Day with over 30 pre-existing compilations to reflect a specific relationship or genre, including "Cities of Romance," Miles Davis Love Songs," and "Latin -- The Language of Love," among others. Meanwhile, the ability to design a customized CD will be available as well, allowing consumers to choose songs and designs for their own personalized Valentine's album.
About musicmaker.com
Musicmaker.com, with offices in New York City and Reston, Virginia, is a leading custom compilation and secure digital download music retailer on the Internet. Musicmaker.com offers music lovers the opportunity to build their own CDs by selecting and organizing songs from a library over 250,000 tracks from over 125 labels in a variety of music genres. Powerful search engines help find selections by genre, artist, title and label and tracks can be sampled before selection. CDs include up to 20 tracks or 70 minutes of music and can be personalized with unique labels as well as imprints on the jewel boxes. CDs start at $9.95 and orders are taken through secure credit card link. Most orders are shipped within 24 hours. Musicmaker.com also offers a significant number of the most popular songs with a library of over 100,000 titles in three secure digital downloading formats: Microsoft Windows Media Technologies 4.0, watermarked MP3, and Liquid Audio.
In addition to EMI Recorded Music, musicmaker.com currently has exclusive marketing agreements with Columbia House (jointly owned by Sony Music and Warner Music Group), Zomba Music Group, Audio Book Club, Platinum Entertainment, and Woodstock.com, as well as marketing agreements with AOL (and their Netscape Netcenter, Spinner, Winamp and ICQ brands), Musicland, Transworld Entertainment, Wherehouse Music, and others.
The company was founded by Raju Puthukarai, former president of RCA/BMG Music and Video Club and President of Warner Music Media, Robert Bernardi, Cofounder of PictureTel and TranSwitch, and Irwin H. Steinberg, former Chairman and CEO of PolyGram Records, USA. |
