OurStage Announces Top Music Festival Partnerships With Bonnaroo, Newport Folk, Bumbershoot...

OurStage Announces Top Music Festival Partnerships With Bonnaroo, Newport
Folk, Bumbershoot and Several Others
Festival Bookers Use OurStage to Identify and Book Emerging Talent

BOSTON, April 10, 2008 /PRNewswire/ -- OurStage (http://www.OurStage.com),
a leading online destination for discovering music from top emerging artists,
has announced its slate of music festival partnerships for the upcoming 2008
festival season. Several of the nation's top music festivals, including
Bonnaroo, Noise Pop, Newport Folk Festival, JVC Jazz Festival Newport,
Bumbershoot, SoulFest, Afro-Punk, among others, will tap into OurStage to help
fill out their line-ups using the company's fan-driven music filters to
identify the best emerging talent on the site.
"OurStage provides a viable alternative to existing festival submission
mechanisms and the traditional A&R process," said Bonnaroo founder Richard
Goodstone. "We partnered with OurStage in 2007 to discover promising acts like
American Babies, Ashleigh Flynn, and Nico Stai. We found real value in
OurStage and are expanding this partnership in 2008."
Bonnaroo is using OurStage as its online talent search platform to host a
contest for the best up-and-coming bands in the US to play Bonnaroo 2008.
Bonnaroo and OurStage have opened up a new channel on OurStage, dubbed The
Battle for the Roo, free to enter and open to all bands interested in playing
the festival this year. The channel runs through the end of May when the
Bonnaroo team will select from top-ranking bands in the channel, as decided by
the fans, to play the Sonic Stage at Bonnaroo in June, 2008.
Other festivals using OurStage include San Francisco's famed Noise Pop.
"Noise Pop has always been about showcasing and celebrating the best
independent music, and for Noise Pop 2008, OurStage enabled us to do this in a
way that also brings the fans into the mix," says Kevin Arnold, founder of the
16-year old festival. "Identifying the best new bands, with increasing fan
following to play our festival, is always a challenging undertaking. OurStage
was the platform that helped us scale our selection process in a cool, open,
democratic way."
As the only website that allows fans to identify the best new music on the
site using a tamper-proof judging process, OurStage offers artists a free
platform to showcase their talents, while at the same time giving the industry
a much-needed market research platform by tracking how music tests with a
growing number of music fans.
"OurStage's vision is to become the first choice for both music fans and
industry professionals to source the best music for their needs," shares Ben
Campbell, CEO of OurStage. "As the music business continues to search for new
and better ways to identify and distribute quality music, we are excited to
provide a more sound A&R process based around audience testing and consumer
demand."
Since its inception last year, OurStage has developed relationships with
dozens of music industry partners to create career-launching opportunities for
artists who are charting on the site. The site recently partnered with AOL,
the #1 ranking music destination site, to be its exclusive content provider
for unsigned and "independent" music, thereby offering its top-ranking artists
additional mainstream exposure on AOL's music homepage, artist homepage, and
elsewhere on the site.
About OurStage, Inc.
OurStage is a leading website for new music lovers to discover and promote
new artists, and for artists to connect with fans and earn valuable industry
support to aid their career development. The site, which is free to fans and
artists, enables fans to choose the best emerging talent in multiple music
genres by using a tamper-proof judging process. Top-ranked artists receive
significant career-building promotion and support from established artists,
industry professionals, and a broad assortment of partners, including AOL
Music, Bonnaroo, Bumbershoot, PLUG Awards, Newport Folk Festival, JVC Jazz
Festival Newport, Paste Magazine, CMJ, Noise Pop, and many others. Founded in
early 2007, OurStage delivers music and related content to over a million fans
in 140 countries each month, filtered and ranked by OurStage members for the
pleasure of the listening public.
For more information on OurStage, contact Girlie Action:
Danny DaSilva: 212-989-2222 x106 or Danny@girlie.com
Jessica Rotter: 212-989-2222 x133 or Jessica@girlie.com

To submit your music for free to play top festivals, visit
www.OurStage.com
SOURCE OurStage

Danny DaSilva, +1-212-989-2222 ext. 106, Danny@girlie.com, or Jessica Rotter,
+1-212-989-2222 ext. 133, Jessica@girlie.com, both of Girlie Action, for
OurStage, Inc.