INDIE NEWS BEAT January 3, 2005 Edition

Jair Dynast Helps to Fight Child Labor "Suffer the Little Children and Support their Plight"

Jair Dynast is accepting his social responsibility by choosing to contribute a portion of his earnings from CD sales online to help the plight of child labourers worldwide. Jair and his record label, eMultimedia Group, joined forces to make it their mission to embrace good works in the community on an annual basis. The plan is to support a different charity each year and to come up with different ways to raise money for the chosen cause each year.

For the coming year, Jair Dynast has chosen the National Consumers League and its cause of helping to stop child labor worldwide. Accordingly, his record label, eMultimedia Group, will be donating $1.00 from every CD sold online to that organization to go towards this cause. The promotion will run in 2005 as "The Hip Hop Ambassadors" and will be publicized along with his North American tours throughout the ensuing year.

eMultimedia Group believes that if every business gives a little of its time and money to a worthy cause, we will inch a step closer to making our world a better place in which to live and work. Reduced hardship means a less hostile environment, safer world, society and community.

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MPFree.com Gives Away 25,000 Free Music Downloads in its First Month

MP3 players were one of the most popular holiday gifts this year. But with the music-industry crackdown on illegal file sharing, how can these gift recipients get legal music downloads for free? That's the question that the founders of www.MPFree.com set out to answer when they launched MPFree last month. "We're trying to give our members the best of both worlds--music downloads that are both 100% free and 100% legal," said Phil Nadel, President of MPFree.

MPFree announced today that it gave away more than 25,000 free music downloads in its first month of operation. "We are thrilled about how quickly MPFree has caught on," said Bill Diamond, Co-Founder of MPFree, "We're getting a great reaction from our members. We're glad to be able to provide a totally legal way of getting free music."

MPFree estimates that it will give away 100,000 free music downloads in its second month. "With 500,000 tracks to choose from, MPFree has something for everyone," said Nadel. www.MPFree.com offers music from artists across all genres and from all of the major record labels.

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2005 DIY Convention Sets First Music Acts

The 2005 DIY Convention will feature appearances by indie stalwarts Mountain Goats and The Hidden Cameras during its week-long celebration of film, music and books in February. The groups are the first national independents slated to perform as part of the fifth annual DIY Convention: Do It Yourself in Film, Music & Books, which will be held Feb. 7-12, 2005 in Los Angeles at various venues.

The lo-fi sound of Mountain Goats has been a part of dozens of compilations and labels since the group's 1991 birth, many of them released on cassette and avidly traded among a fervent underground following. Singer/guitarist John Darnielle has been the main focus of Mountain Goats' rotating cast, offering a high-minded take on relationships and everyday life in his songs, many of them part of a larger narrative when strung together.

Joel Gibb leads the Hidden Cameras melodic, flag-waving celebration of gay life, captured on the much-praised debut album "The Smell of Our Own," a mix of religious imagery and sexuality set to pop music. The Canadian group has received rave notices in Europe and is now touring in support of its new album, "Mississauga Goddam," inspired by a Nina Simone diatribe against racism and clearly appropriate in this political climate.

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Patrice Pike Wins 2004 USA Songwriting Competition

Patrice Pike, a true woman in rock behind the Rock/Alternative group Sister Seven (from Austin, TX) has won the overall top prize of the 2004 Songwriting Competition. "My Three Wishes" was the winning song written by Patrice Pike, Wayne Sutton, Sean Phillips and Darrell Phillips.

"We are ecstatic to win the competition for ourselves as a group as it emphasizes once again the crediblity of our work as Sister Seven and as individual songwriers in our solo efforts apart from each other. It's amazing that just after three weeks afterour first time to play together again in 3 1/2 years that we are sharing this together as great songwriters," said Patrice Pike. She was first signed to EMI/SBK, later to Arista records by the world famous A&R - Clive Davis and now she is on an indie label. Other winners include: Derrik Jordan, Stephanie Lewis, Lorraine Ferro, Karen Taylor-Good, Jason Blume and more.

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ITM's MPIS-MP3 Device To Ship Pre-Loaded With Red91 Content

International Technologies Mengtang and Red91 are pleased to announce an agreement that will see its popular MPIS-MP3 player ship with three ready to play, pre-loaded tracks by Super Vinyl People. Since becoming a digital only company, the number of marketing opportunities now open to Red91 has increased dramatically.

"There have been so many offers of content for this unique bundle offering, but we liked the forward thinking by all those involved with Red91" said Michael Umm, President and CEO of International Technologies Mengtang. He continued, "with more than 5,000 MPIS units ordered so far, we believe this speaks volumes on this great offer."

The MPIS-MP3 unit features 128MB of internal high capacity flash memory, is compact in size and sells for $129.00. It includes an FM tuner, OLED colour display light for easy scrolling of a personal playlist or radio and has more than enough room to load other music with 43 hours of play time running on only two AA batteries.

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Limelight Networks Delivers Live Jimmy Buffett Concert

With the help of Limelight Networks, a leading end-to-end digital delivery network, singer/songwriter/author Jimmy Buffett brought a unique concert experience to fans last month, when his live concert from Orlando was broadcast around the world via the Internet. Fans were able to experience Buffett live in concert through a DVD-quality video broadcast streamed through Limelight Networks' extensive high-quality digital network directly to seven of Buffett's Margaritaville Café locations around the U.S. and Caribbean.

"Jimmy Buffett is a true innovator when it comes to harnessing technology to reach his fans and this is just an example of his leadership in embracing the Internet," said David Rice, vice president of sales and marketing at Limelight Networks. "For the first time ever, Buffett fans in multiple locations across the globe could experience the same concert event in real-time -- throw in some beach balls and it was as close to the real thing as you could get."

Limelight Networks was selected by Radio Margaritaville as the exclusive streaming provider of the concert based on their proven ability to deliver heavy media files quickly, inexpensively and with guaranteed reliability. Radio Margaritaville has also relied on Limelight Networks for its online broadcasts for the past two years.

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