MTV and OurStage.com Announce Partnership to Engage Emerging Artists and Their Fans

MTV and OurStage.com Announce Partnership to Engage Emerging Artists and Their Fans

BOSTON, Aug. 26 /PRNewswire/ -- MTV and OurStage (http://www.ourstage.com/), the leading music discovery destination providing professional opportunities for top-ranked emerging artists, today announced an ongoing partnership to create engaging experiences for up-and-coming musicians and their fans via the OurStage platform. To kick off the partnership, musicians in top markets across the U.S. have been participating in OurStage.com-hosted efforts this summer, and will receive significant exposure through the mtvU Six Flags VMA Tour and MTV's flagship music event, the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards.

By teaming up, MTV and OurStage look to develop online integrations that harness the enthusiasm fans everywhere show towards their favorite musicians, combined with the music discovery and mass audience that MTV and its related networks - MTV2, mtvU, MTV Tr3s - are known for. Additionally, OurStage.com becomes an additional tool for MTV's music supervision team to utilize when sourcing new music for on-air inclusion.

"We are pleased to be partnering with OurStage for our emerging artist-focused efforts online," said Dermot McCormack, head of Digital Media for MTV Networks Music and Logo group. "OurStage offers an extraordinary voting platform for finding the top emerging talent, and they also have an amazing pool of over 90,000 artists from across the country. The fact that the rankings are powered by the fans, on a judging platform that is specifically designed to prevent tampering and gaming, is very important to MTV in our ongoing commitment to supporting emerging artists."

"We are excited to have MTV as our partner to help deserving artists earn regional and national exposure," shares Ben Campbell, CEO of OurStage. "OurStage is in the business of delivering life-altering opportunities for worthy artists - so working with MTV2, one of the greatest brands in the history of the industry, is really exciting for OurStage and our whole community."

About OurStage, Inc.

OurStage is a music discovery destination dedicated to new artist and new music discovery. On OurStage, artists, fans and industry professionals all come together - to discover, judge, & enjoy the best new music and the best new artists online - as ranked by the fans - using the company's proprietary, game-proof judging engine. Users are able to discover top-ranked, categorized music without having to search through thousands of songs. Top-ranked artists receive significant career-building promotion and support from famous artists, fans, industry professionals and a broad assortment of partners, including MTV2, ABC Radio, Radio One, AOL Music, Bonnaroo, Bumbershoot, PLUG Awards, Newport Folk Festival, JVC Jazz Festival Newport, Paste Magazine, CMJ, Noise Pop, and many others. OurStage also offers music research services to artists and record labels through its recently launched Track Validation Services (TRAViS), currently in beta. Founded in 2007, OurStage delivers music and related content to more than 3 million fans in 140 countries each month - and has over 1 million registered users.

About MTV

MTV is the dynamic, vibrant experiment at the intersection of music, creativity and youth culture. For over 27 years, MTV has evolved, challenged the norm, and detonated boundaries -- giving each new generation a creative outlet and voice that entertains, informs and unites on every platform and screen. On-air, MTV is the number one rated full-day ad-supported cable network for P12-24. Online, MTV.com grew a healthy +9% from 1Q09, averaging 23.6M unique visitors for the second quarter of 2009. The site continues to grow video content streams, up significantly from 1Q09 by +15%, generating a whopping 262.2M streams in Q209, a +7% increase from the same time period last year. And MTV's successful sibling networks MTV2, mtvU and MTV Tr3s each deliver unprecedented customized content, super-serving music fans, college students and young American Latinos like no one else. MTV is part of MTV Networks, a unit of Viacom (NYSE:VIA) (NYSE:VIA.B) , one of the world's leading creators of programming and content across all media platforms. Wanna know more? Come on in. . . www.mtvpress.com.

For more information, please visit OurStage.com (www.ourstage.com/go/mtv)

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Source: OurStage, Inc.

CONTACT: Chris Sita, OurStage.com, +1-908-489-3416, chris@ourstage.com

Web Site: http://www.ourstage.com/

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Profile: International Entertainment