HITS: "Musicmaker.com to Produce Custom CDs for Pepsi"
RESTON, Va., March 31 /PRNewswire/ -- In response to investor inquiries, musicmaker.com (Nasdaq: HITS) confirmed an arrangement with Pepsi-Cola North America under which it expects to produce 3 to 5 million custom CDs for Pepsi's 'Choose Your Music' promotion set to launch in May.
Details of the promotion, which is expected to be backed by a $15 million TV ad budget and notices on 1.5 billion Pepsi packages, were first disclosed in the March 17, 2000 edition of The Wall Street Journal. The promotion will be communicated on wraps and on-pack.
"With this promotion, Pepsi continues to be at the forefront of promotional marketing," notes Raju Puthukarai, musicmaker.com's President and CEO. "With our state-of-the-art equipment and facility, we are well equipped to produce the millions of CDs this promotion is likely to generate."
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 of tracks from over 165 labels in a variety of music genres. 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. The musicmaker.com site also offers over 100,000 songs for download in MP3 and Microsoft Windows Media formats.
In addition to EMI Recorded Music and Zomba Music Group, musicmaker.com currently has exclusive marketing agreements with Columbia House (jointly owned by Sony Music and Warner 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.
Certain of Musicmaker's statements, including its statements about the number of CDs it expects to produce in the Pepsi promotion, the number of CDs that the promotion is likely to generate, the success of the promotion generally, the amount of money Pepsi is likely to spend on advertising and the amount of advertising Pepsi is likely to do, the company's ability to produce the CDs, the future capabilities of its equipment, the company's ability to fulfill actual or expected demand are forward-looking statements. There are a number of uncertainties, risks and other factors, which may cause the actual results, performance, or achievements expressed or implied by such forward- looking statements to materially differ. Factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially include, among others, the ability of Pepsi to predict trends and preferences in the changing music industry, the amount and effectiveness of Pepsi's advertising, matters over which we have no control, Pepsi's ability to obtain exclusive music rights and to obtain such rights to music that is in demand by music consumers, particularly that class of music consumers who use the internet, the fact that our competitors, current and future, including some of the record labels themselves, may launch competing promotions, the ability of or equipment, facilities and staff in the future to produce CDs in a timely, cost effective fashion, as well as the risks set forth in the Company's Registration Statement filed on Form S-1 dated as of July 7, 1999 as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("Filings") and risk factors listed from time to time in subsequent Filings.
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SOURCE: musicmaker.com |
