Tuesday, September 05, 2000

96,471 people watched the Reading Festival webcast live over the weekend of 25, 26, 27 August 2000. The event was broadcast on meanfiddler.com and the site experienced record numbers of hits and unique users. This figure is high by comparison with other webcast festivals and indicates meanfiddler.com's ability to attract traffic across its site.

Average time spent on the site during this weekend was 13 minutes. The event featured live performances from the likes of Oasis, Beck, the Deftones, the Bluetones and Rage Against the Machine.

meanfiddler.com web programming also featured exclusive behind the scenes stories with backstage footage and exclusive interviews with many of the artists and guests.

The exclusive live coverage will be rebroadcast on meanfiddler.com during the course of September. From 12pm - 6pm on Friday, Saturday and Sunday each weekend footage from one of the stages will be rebroadcast:

September 8, 9 and 10  Dance Tent footage
September 15, 16 and 17  Evening Session Stage footage
September 22, 23 and 24  Main Stage footage 

There will also be on-demand programming available onsite throughout September featuring the best highlights from all the stages plus exclusive backstage coverage and interviews with the likes of Slipknot. All archived footage can be watched using the Apple QuickTime Player.

Vince Power, Chairman of meanfiddler.com said:

"We always knew we could build an audience given the quality of the content we bring to the web. We are delighted to have attracted a 6 figure audience for what was our first attempt at a webcast on this scale in so short a period following our float. We believe it was the largest outdoor music webcast in Europe so far. More premium content webcasts from our world leading events and venues will follow as we build the largest online live music company."

For further information:

Takki Sulaiman
Hansard Communications
Tel: 020 7735 9415
m- 0378 419218

Notes to Editors:

About meanfiddler.com:

The Mean Fiddler Group (MFG) was established by Vince Power in 1982, and is now the leading music festival and venue promoter in the UK, owning 12 venues (e.g. Jazz Cafe, The Astoria, The Forum and Point 101) and promoting festivals such as Reading, Leeds, the Fleadh (UK & US) and homelands (England, Ireland and Scotland). These festivals and venues have gained a reputation for securing performances from some of the best talent in the music business. meanfiddler.com plc was established to leverage the intellectual property rights of MFG. The Company has the exclusive rights to broadcast live music performances from all MFG venues and festivals via the internet and digital TV. The site has just passed the half a million unique users mark, since its soft launch in after February 2000 users spend an average of 9 minutes on site. The power of music as a driver of web traffic is best illustrated by the traffic uplifts generated by the Company's web broadcast of homelands England at the end of May (homelands is the country's leading dance music event and featured artists such as Moby, Leftfield and Public Enemy).

During the week of the live broadcast, the following uplifts were registered on the site:

Average weekly hits: 192,000  homelands week: 698,000
Average weekly page views: 44,000  homelands week: 212,000
Average weekly unique users: 19,000  homelands week: 36,000 
Average time spent on site: 8.73 mins  homelands week: 11.43 mins 

The Company's site is in flash format and comparisons with HTML sites would require the hits and page impression figures to be multiplied by approximately 20. The implication for sponsors and advertisers is that online music broadcasting provides a unique branding, targeting and promotional environment. Brand exposure and the value of promotional pages and links are significantly enhanced through a large increase in users, page impressions and the average time spent online.

In the medium term the directors plan to launch a music channel on digital television under the Mean Fiddler brand name. It is anticipated that the Company's revenue will come from licensing deals, sponsorship, advertising and sales of music and music-related products.

Meanfiddler.com plc has the ability to leverage the Mean Fiddler brand, the customer base represented by the 2 million people who attend MFG festivals, events and venues each year and the proprietary live music content of MFG.

Meanfiddler.com plc is well positioned in one of the fastest growing areas of e-commerce - online music sales. The Company intends to enter another fast growing area of e-commerce via online ticket sales.

By 2003 33 million users will purchase music online compared to 6 million in 1998 representing sales of $2.6 billion. (Jupiter Communications)

In 1999 online ticket brokers sold $300 million worth of tickets. This is expected to grow to $4 billion by 2004(Forrester Research)