The Net Welcomes Tiscali Free JukeBox

Cagliari, 26th April 2006 – From its birth on, Tiscali, through the strong interaction with the online music industry, has provided a winning combination of services, including RadioX, the first online radio service in Italy. As a result of its firm commitment to legal online music, leading to partnerships and services launched throughout Europe, Tiscali is today unveiling an innovative new service: Tiscali Free JukeBox. The platform, powered by Mercora, enables users to search, find, browse millions of tracks, and legally listen to and share tracks using streaming technology.

By connecting to http://it.tiscali.mercora.com/index_ita.html (Italy) or http://www.tiscali.co.uk/jukebox (Uk), all users with a Tiscali e-mail account will be able to download the Tiscali Free JukeBox client to search and listen to millions of songs or other musical tracks for their pleasure in streaming mode. Tiscali Free JukeBox is one of the biggest and most comprehensive peer-to-peer jukeboxes ever to hit the net. Users can browse by artist name or genre, or check out the playlists provided by other Tiscali Free JukeBox users/DJs, or access biography and image files of their favourite artists, plus podcasts.

Tiscali Free JukeBox provides music lovers with access to a catalogue of more than 3.5 million tracks from an enormous array of artists – ranging from international stars produced by majors to musicians quite simply looking for a venue for people to listen to and share their compositions or performances.

All this and more....Tiscali Free JukeBox features an amazing sale catalogue of more than a million tracks – Tiscali Music Download – and a pre-listening service dedicated to potential online music buyers. Users can select the track/s they are interested in by clicking “LISTEN.” By clicking “BUY” they can then purchase and download the track/s permanently at the low price of 0.99 euro/0.69 pounds sterling each.

Tiscali Free JukeBox is an innovative online music service provided by Tiscali this time thanks to the partnership with Mercora, the next-generation Internet company that developed the innovative ‘music search’ service and worldwide social network. The venture is also supported by SCF (Società Consortile Fonografici), the Italian rights collecting society acting on behalf of record producers, artists and performers. Through an international agreement reached between the collecting societies serving the European record industry (the so called “webcasting agreement”), SCF has granted Tiscali its first trial licence enabling this innovative peer-to-peer streaming service in various European countries... where users can legally access a practically unlimited online music selection.

Mario Mariani, Senior Vice President Media and VAS, Tiscali, comments: “ With this new service, Tiscali Free JukeBox, we have renewed our efforts to provide European Internet users with access to an innovative, legal online music service. Developed for Tiscali by Mercora, the service and its interface have been organised with our users’ priorities and needs. The interface is therefore simple and immediate, and features the added value of a buying option, in full compliance with current laws. It gives us great pleasure to work together with Mercora and SCF on the basis of this agreement, and we trust this venture will bring us one step forward in legitimising the Internet as an immense resource at the service of the music industry”.

“ We are thrilled to partner with Tiscali to provide the Tiscali Free Jukebox,” said Srivats Sampath, President and CEO, Mercora. “ The musical experience on Mercora is immersive, contagious and social.”

“ We are very pleased about our new partnership with Tiscali offering the Internet a new generation of legal web radio. Thanks to Tiscali’s technical systems, this agreement represents an important step in our mission to foster a music culture that fights against all forms of pirated music. SCF is in fact involved in promoting a dialogue between online music consumers and copyright owners and in seizing the many opportunities that are offered by the Internet to the music industry. This experimental web casting agreement is valid in each European country that Tiscali will be interested in operating in and represents a new opportunity in preserving music digital contents,” commented Gianluigi Chiodaroli, President of SCF.

Tiscali Free JukeBox is now available in Italy and the UK.