From Jewel To Santana: Musicnotes.com Launches New Digital Sheet Music Site

MADISON, WI – July 14, 2000 - Musicnotes.com, an online sheet music store where customers can download digital sheet music immediately or order traditional music books, has launched a redesigned site and is entering into a partnership with HarmonyCentral.

Musicnotes.com quietly opened their doors in October 1999. "It was a soft launch," said Kathleen Marsh, Musicnotes.com President. "Our goal was to watch customer feedback and see how they interact with our technology." Over the past four months, the site has been completely revamped: faster, no frames, easier to use, and an improved search functionality. In addition, the commerce and check-out pages have been streamlined.

"It is a much easier shopping experience," adds Christopher Parr, Musicnotes.com Vice President of Creative and Marketing, who developed the new design and strategy for Musicnotes.com.

"Musicnotes.com is a true e-commerce company, unlike the other dot coms," said Parr. "Honestly, it's easier to pick a shirt or toy up at the mall than ordering online and waiting a few days for the UPS truck to show up. Musicnotes.com, on the other hand, delivers instant gratification as customers receive their favorite sheet music immediately. Our goal was to create a user-friendly site that evolves around the customer and encourages interaction with our digital product."

The new site contains more than ten thousand pieces of digital sheet music from Warner Bros. Publications and Mel Bay Publications, with many titles from other publishers coming soon. In addition to the instant delivery of digital sheet music, the site also offers "music books & more," a catalog of more than two hundred thousand traditional music titles, CDs and videos from Warner Bros., Hal Leonard, Mel Bay, Alfred Publishing Co., Music Sales Corporation and others.

The Musicnotes.com catalog will also be available soon on a co-branded, customized site developed for HarmonyCentral, the largest musician community on the web.

"We're thrilled to join Musicnotes.com in this momentous partnership," said Ray Campbell, CEO of HarmonyCentral. "We've become the world's largest musician community through providing exceptional services and experiences to our users. This agreement allows us to continue doing exactly that with a key industry service leader. It's a natural fit, and as musicians ourselves, we couldn't be more pleased."



Harmony Central will feature links from their site to the Musicnotes.com/HarmonyCentral co-branded website. Members of the Harmony Central community can browse and search the full Musicnotes.com line of sheet music and music books, never straying more than a click away from HarmonyCentral.

"The relationship is a natural," added Marsh, "since the overwhelming majority of HarmonyCentral visitors are active players." Of the 1,500,000 unique monthly visitors to HarmonyCentral, 69.3% write songs, 58% play in a band, and over 34% take or teach music lessons. Nearly 90% of HarmonyCentral visitors describe themselves as amateur or professional musicians.


About Musicnotes.com
Musicnotes.com was founded in 1998 as a publisher of electronic editions of the entire spectrum of published music, from classical to standards to current hits. All Musicnotes.com digital sheet music is copyright-cleared and completely legal. Musicnotes.com works with print publishers such as Warner Bros. and Mel Bay to take what they publish in ink on paper onto the web in a publication-quality, instantly-downloadable form. Musicnotes.com files are tiny and easy to download, and can be viewed directly within a web page. The Musicnotes.com proprietary technology is based on MusE, an award-winning music engraving system under continuous development since 1979. In 1980, MusE was used to publish the first-ever edition of music produced entirely on a computer.

About HarmonyCentral
HarmonyCentral went live from an MIT dorm room in 1994, and now has more than 14 million monthly page views. In 1999, HarmonyCentral merged with music gear e-tailer zZounds.com to form HarmonyCentral.com. The combined sites have over 15,000 pages of content. The sites operate independently under the parent corporation of HarmonyCentral.Inc. Vulcan Ventures, Inc., the investment organization of Paul G. Allen, provided lead funding. Also participating in the first funding round were Zilkha Venture Partners and several angel investors.

For more information about Musicnotes.com, contact:
Kathleen Marsh, President
kmarsh@musicnotes.com     Phone: 608-836-9000 Fax: 608-831-8200

For more information about HarmonyCentral.com, contact:
Mary Stevens, Director of Marketing Communications
mary@harmony-central.com Phone: 650-812-7647    Fax: 650-812-7644





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