BETA Records - Your music matters!

The placement of the ad unit is also unique in that the user can drag and position the empty ad unit anywhere in the profile page to make for a more desirable look and user experience. "At the end of the day, the user should decide what type of advertisement they want to appear on their profile page, where it goes, and the price per CPM, subsequently keeping up to 85% of the ad revenue. Our independent artists are creating massive digital brands and bringing their traffic to our community - they are entitled to decide what ads they have an affinity for and share in the profits," states Christian Honetschlaeger, President.

Using DAAN, any company or user can then locate the most popular profiles/people in the BETA community and request that their ad artwork be inserted into the module. Immediately, an alert is sent via email and internal messaging. Once the request is accepted, the ad unit is locked into place and goes live, paying out ad revenue in real time within hours to the host.

"DAAN is an incredible feature for us and we are excited to launch, test and license this new technology as a complete system for peer-to-peer advertising," said Rock Mutchler, CEO. "BETA's backbone eWallet system protects both the publisher of the ad unit and the advertiser by making payments in real time against their available 'BETA bucks,' allowing users to place a cap on their spend - once the money is gone the current ad dissolves and the next in the queue appears automatically."

Source: Send2Press.com

BETA Records President Christian Honetschlaeger states, "BETARecordsTV.com will allow our online community to 'cross the bridge' to like-minded music fans in the world of television. These two media will make BETA Records TV unique in its delivery and content."

The series is scheduled to begin airing in cooperation with BinTune TV on Saturday, October 25, 2008. A two-year, 52-episode commitment has been made for BETA Records TV, with each 30-minute show providing content that is instructional, educational and entertaining within the guidelines of E&I regulations.

BETA Records TV will have a music centric focus. Each segment will feature well-known and emerging artists, music industry executive interviews, reports on new CD releases, the latest in music equipment and recording techniques, and trends in pop culture.

Most segments will be filmed at BETA's multimedia village which includes a digital/analog recording studio and 16-camera video production room with green screen. Remotes will generate content from various locales, utilizing the BETA Bus mobile recording studio offering a combination of on-site promotional opportunities for advertisers.

BETA TV's target audience will mirror and enhance the online community with teen trendsetters with an eye for pop culture and an ear for music. Sponsors will be offered exclusive categories with the opportunity to create proprietary branded vignettes to air during commercial breaks, as well as their own integrated program and banners on BETARecords.com and the roaming BETA bus as a custom-wrapped mobile billboard.

Series producers are BETA Records President Chris Honetschlaeger, CEO Georg van Handel, and music industry executive and attorney David Codikow.

"We are excited about BETA Records TV being part of our BinTune Network, now in its fourth season," states Gene Maillard, President of BinTune. "BETA brings a unique aspect to our informational show format and we plan to help BETA expand into our Direct and Dish Network airings along with international expansion in over 50 countries."

While David Codikow confirms BETA has been approached by some "very key advertisers," discussions are still in early stages due to the various options offered by the online to on-air "menu of opportunities."

BETA CEO Georg van Handel, himself an accomplished composer and producer, states, "We have spent years creating what we believe to be the most complete and supportive infrastructure for an active and successful social network. Our active online social 'ecosystem' and now a national television series both encourage our artists for career growth while engaging our music fans with a technology that allows them to interact and congregate with like-minded communities."

Extended segments, along with archives of all episodes will be available after television airings on BETARecordsTV.com.

Source: Yahoo Finance

"We know that recording professionals are pleased at the idea of higher quality MP3 files and that this new SoundWave360 breakthrough will help every BETA Records artist stand out in the music marketplace," notes Chris Honetschlaeger, BETA President.

The SoundWave360 process uses mastering techniques with a series of processes created by Founder and Chairman, Paul Gilman. "We are proud to be offering this service to BETA Records' artists as we see them as being the leaders in the next model for the music business."

SoundWave360 CEO Raymond McGlamery comments, "Having been in the business of music at WMG and a number of other labels, I have seen the need for this type of community for several years. BETA Records has a focus unlike other social networks coupled with new technologies that allow artists and fans to truly support each other creating new avenues for publicity and revenue. This is a dream partnership for us to show off our technology and give artists a leg up who need one."

About BETA Records BETA Records is a hybrid community that actively finds, produces, and showcases unsigned artists to the music industry and distributes content to fans via digital channels. BETA offers each artist a dedicated page ( http://www.betarecords.com) to profile personal information, stream and/or download music, blog and email with fans, and much more.

About SoundWave360 SoundWave360 is a new groundbreaking and patented audio technology by which any audio source can be processed and given dimension and clarity for distribution by any model. SoundWave360 can be applied to any audio component, be it audio only, video, audio books, film and television. The parent company, Surroundphones Holdings Inc., is a privately held company.

Source: MarketWatch

"BETA Records is taking the ideas, philosophy and functionality of the record labels of yesteryear and adding modern technology," states Chris Honetschlaeger, President. "Now, fans and bands are going to be able to interact in exciting ways, leading to more people sharing and recommending more new music than ever."

The newly launched site offers quick-and-easy tools for artists and fans to communicate with each other while sharing, buying or selling music, ringtones, and merchandise. "We created a whole new world involving virtual branding, communication, music, and commerce," says Georg van Handel, CEO.

Visitors to the online BETA world will find downloads, streaming, video, email, widgets, ringtone makers, dynamic song pricing, and intuitive search-and-match technology to help find new music.

"Other sites have made music accessible, but it's not about how many 'friends' listen to you because friends don't pay the bills," notes Honetschlaeger. "What we've launched will take a song to 20 different markets, giving 85% of the revenue back to the artists. The more exposure a song has, the more likely it is that someone will buy it." Even fans can earn revenue via recommendations and their own profile's traffic.

The new music and social networking technology is now available in the USA. Next to launch will be England, www.betarecords.co.uk; Germany, www.betarecords.de; and Mexico, www.betarecords.com.mx, with China coming soon.

About BETA Records
BETA Records is a hybrid community that actively finds, produces, and showcases unsigned artists to the music industry and distributes content to fans via digital channels. BETA offers each artist a dedicated page to utilize the full range of the site's technology.

Source: Send2Press

BETA Records will utilize Kaltura to enhance a highly immersive and engaging music experience that creates close connections between unsigned artists and indie music fans on the new site slated for release in January 2008. Independent artists can easily upload their music and get exposed to a world-wide audience.

"Creating music videos in a collaborative setting is a phenomenal way for artists to interact with their fans and further promote their music. Artists are very connected with their fans and are always looking for new and fun ways to stay in touch. Kaltura's technology allows them to do so and also helps them create cool music videos for their songs," said Chris Harper, CXO (Chief Experience Officer) with BETA Records, LLC.

"In the couple of months since launching Kaltura.com, we have seen many musicians and bands using our site to create collaborative music videos together with their fans," said Ron Yekutiel, Chairman and CEO of Kaltura. "Partnering with BETA Records is a great way for us to extend our platform's reach into existing music affinity groups, enabling artists to engage and interact with their fans in the 'comfort' of their own social network. BETA Records will be an important node in our growing Global Network of partners".

About Kaltura
Kaltura is a New York-based pioneer in Collaborative Media, allowing groups of users to create rich-media projects together using video, audio, and animation, similarly to what wiki platforms enable with text. Kaltura's revolutionary concept of group-video-making provides the incentive and opportunity for people to 'lean forward' and create rich-media with friends and like-minded people. Kaltura's technology is implemented in the kaltura.com portal, available to all for free; and is also licensed to other websites, social networks, and brands for their customized and integrated use. Together, Kaltura's partners comprise the Kaltura Global Network, the world's largest network of re-mixable, shared and legal rich-media content, and creators. Founded in 2006, Kaltura's management and advisory team includes top notch advertising, marketing, and media executives as well as seasoned technology entrepreneurs, including co-founders of ICQ, Cyota, and Destinator Technologies. For more information visit http://www.kaltura.com or visit the Kaltura blog at http://www.kaltura.com/blog/.

Called "BETACache," the new technology resulted from BETA's PHP developers Rock Mutchler, Paul-Anton van Handel, Jon Bauer, Bernhard Schenkenfelder, and Eric Hollander.

"These guys may have devised the ultimate scalability breakthrough for large-scale communities around the world - it's like taking the performance of a Volkswagen and turning it into a Bentley," says Chris Honetschlaeger, BETA Records president. "From Facebook to the world's 20 million PHP websites, BETA hopes to finally give back to the PHP community we so admire."

PHP applications require a means of caching data from remote services, expensive database queries and other performance-killing operations. These problems are greatly magnified by Web 2.0's heavy reliance on numerous AJAX requests to the web application, and frequent web service calls to partners.

"BETACache could offer a superior alternative to memcached, as well as opening up a tremendous amount of other features to PHP application engineers through JCS," says Rock Mutchler, BETA VP of Technology. "With BETACache, we can now use the leading technologies to solve performance issues that developers face. At BETA we modified Zend Cache in the Zend Framework by adding our own custom object that makes use of the Zend Platform Java Bridge."

The Zend Platform PHP/Java Bridge is a PHP module providing stable and high-performance access to a Java Virtual Machine. "Through this we're able to use the JCS package to provide an enterprise-class, pluggable and tunable distributed caching system written in Java," Mutchler states.

BETACache offers a clustered, distributed cache system which automatically caches objects in local memory, local disk, or on remote servers. The Zend Java Bridge allows high-performance enterprise-class integration between the PHP environment and JCS. "We are excited about future enhancements of BETACache to leverage Enterprise Java persistence systems in our clustered PHP application," Hollander said.

BETA Records will soon provide source code and documentation for the BETACache system. For further information: office@betarecords.com.

Utilizing their new multi-media recording studio in Hollywood, California, the new BETA Records weekly program will allow DJs to perform live with both streaming audio and up to 6 simultaneous video camera feeds. DJs who wish to participate need to be familiar with the latest version of Serato's Scratch Software and Rane 57 hardware.

"We have hand-built three supercomputers with prototype video and audio capture technology," notes Chris Honetschlaeger, BETA Records' President. "This will enable us to stream high quality audio and video via Limelight for pennies per customer per hour." he added.

"For the first time, the DJ community will have the ability to listen and learn the techniques of some of the most popular club DJs around the world," states Georg van Handel, BETA Records' CEO.

These unique performances will take place live every Thursday evening from 7-10 p.m. The DJ series will soon be combined with subsequent compelling content from BETA's website of unsigned bands, music producers and singers.

"Conducting this ongoing series of live performances in our BETA recording studio will allow producers, bands, DJs, and hosts to record compelling audio/video content parallel to the production process," Honetschlaeger pointed out. "Viewers will get the real reality where nothing is scripted and nothing is off-limits," he added.

"This will be an exciting opportunity to watch BETA interact with talent in a unique fly-on-the-wall' approach," van Handel said.

BETA Records will utilize Limelight Networks to enhance a highly immersive and engaging music experience that creates close connections between unsigned artists and indie music fans on the new site slated for release later this year. "We're excited to partner with Limelight for many reasons, including the support Limelight brings to all our partner countries," Honetschlaeger stated.

"We decided to go with a CDN to ensure the artists and fans of our upcoming site will have the best experience possible in getting music, videos, and photos quickly. Limelight Networks has proven to be a solid, flexible platform with reasonable rates, superb sales support and excellent customer service," said Chris Harper, BETA's Chief Experience Officer.

"People worldwide want to connect with each other via a common interest in music - whether they are looking to discover new talent or collaborate together on creating new music," said Lou Greco, Limelight VP of North American enterprise sales and channel operations. "By leveraging Limelight's advanced CDN service, BETA Records solves a business challenge that many user-generated music sites are facing today - providing the best possible experience to a rapidly growing community of users and ensuring reliable and high-quality delivery of rich media regardless of audience size or activity."

Following the success of BETA Records in the USA, Germany and Mexico, company founders Chris Honetschlaeger and Georg van Handel are moving forward with creation of an interconnected online community for the sharing of musical and social experiences. Additional expansion is planned with pending deals in the Netherlands and China expected by year-end.

"BETA Records is opening its online portal to singers, songwriters, instrumentalists, bands and fans everywhere, but with the additional advantage of local land-based operations, expanding global distribution channels and new revenue opportunities across BETA's multiple ecosystem platforms," states Honetschlaeger.

"By combining online's social interaction with the personalization of local facilities, BETA Records offers the best of both worlds to everyone who makes or enjoys music," van Handel states. "We love being an online record company, but there are many advantages to having terrestrial operations, including recording studios, mobile recording facilities, A&R representatives, video and broadcast professionals, and distribution channels," van Handel added.

"Unsigned artists joining BETA Records receive their own personal Web presence, complete with hosting of songs, photos, biographical and contact information, and a wide variety of additional features, including opportunities for networking, studio appearances, live shows, airplay on BETA Radio (www.BETA.fm), and presentation to decision-makers throughout the fields of music, motion pictures, television, radio and live venues," says Honetschlaeger.

"Every advancement in technology, recording, distribution and promotion at BETA Records brings independent artists closer to enjoying all the advantages formerly reserved for artists on one of the four major record labels," notes Chris Harper, BETA's Chief Experience Officer.

The Temptations began on Motown Records and are now on New Door Records, a part of Universal Music Group. "Their track record since the 1960s has been astonishing," notes Chris Honetschlaeger, BETA President. "They have multiple Gold and Platinum records and four Grammy awards, so it was great to welcome them into our new studio."

Recording took place in the BETA studio for a solid week on the Temptations' new album entitled "Back to Front," scheduled for release on New Door/Universal on September 18. "We enjoyed the BETA team, and the studio is 1,500 square feet of sonic magic!" says Otis Williams, lead singer of The Temptations.

The BETA studio is equipped with the best of both worlds - digital and analog equipment. Utilizing the "all native" Mac/Logic/Apogee Symphony combo not only allows for the best A/D and D/A conversion, it also enables producers to patch into top-of-the-line outboard gear like GML, Manley, Universal Audio and much more.

"The new BETA Records studio begins with state-of-the-art recording and adds a lot of new technological aspects, such as video recording," notes Honetschlaeger, "enabling the simultaneous creation of a making-the-album video."

The studio, located off Sunset Blvd. in the heart of Hollywood, includes a video production room with green screen, interview room, DJ and Internet radio production areas, kitchen and guest room.

About BETA Records
BETA Records bridges digital distribution with traditional record label functions to launch independent artists in an upcoming social music community. With localized versions of the site in multiple countries and offering far more than just profile pages, indie musicians can reach a world-wide audience — and fans can have fun listening with their friends and making new ones.

View signed Temptations poster from the recording sessions (768×1178pixels):
CAPTION: Legendary recording group, The Temptations, signed a classic poster, with the inscription, "Thanks for a great recording session at the BETA Studios."

The micropayment aspect of Javien along with its comprehensive feature set and global payment processing will facilitate the transactions needed for BETA's growing MP3-based catalog of independent music from around the world.

BETA Records will utilize Javien to enhance a highly immersive and engaging music experience that creates close connections between unsigned artists and indie music fans on the new site slated for release later this year. Independent artists can easily upload their music and get exposed to a world-wide audience.

"Javien proved to have the most cost-effective and robust commerce package and payment solution to meet the needs of our upcoming social music community, and the flexibility to adjust accordingly as we grow," said Chris Harper, CXO (Chief Experience Officer) with BETA Records, LLC.

"We are thrilled to add BETA Records to our growing list of music clients powered by Javien's total commerce solution," stated Leslie Poole, Javien CEO. "They can rely on the Javien platform for their content commerce needs so they can concentrate on serving their consumers and artists."

About Javien Digital Payment Solutions, Inc.
Javien Digital Payment Solutions, headquartered in McLean, Virginia, delivers the next-generation e-commerce management platform to content providers for driving online sales. Offered primarily as an ASP-hosted service, Javien's technology helps digital music sites successfully deploy and manage subscriptions, pay-per-view, downloads, micropayments and alternative billing. Javien's customers include MTV Networks, Trans World Entertainment, Ruckus Network, MusicNet, SNOCAP, Azureus, Hungama Mobile, Forbes.com and Thomson. Javien is backed by K&K Capital Group, which ranks among the most significant financial groups in the Czech Republic. It manages assets of 2 billion USD and employs more than 7,000 people. K&K Capital Group's portfolio includes more than 20 companies around the world. For more information, visit www.javien.com.

BETA Records, the online record company, has just launched a new module within its website that allows anyone to apply as a street team A&R member. Once registered, you can discover unsigned artists, have them join BETA Records, and earn money for each new indie artist signed.

"We are taking the lost art of A&R and putting it back into the hands of music lovers," states Honetschlaeger, President of BETA Records. "Major labels seem to have no budget and no interest in searching out new up-and-coming acts at local city venues. Our Street Teams have a passion for this and now will get paid to do what they love," Honetschlaeger adds.

Approved BETA Street Team members are assigned a 5-digit code that can be given to an artist to join and upload music and pictures to the BETA Records site. This automatically triggers a payout to the Street Team member who then gets cash transferred to their PayPal account.

BETA will also be giving a bonus of $5,000 to the Street Team member with the highest number of sign-ups by Dec 31, 2007. Street Team members will also be supported with a variety of promotional materials, including caps, stickers and more.

For a sneak peek within the system, go to: www.betarecords.com/street-team-info.php and register with the default username of preview@betarecords.com and the password of "betarecords" which has been assigned the test promo code of 12345.

"We've made a real effort to keep the technology as simple as possible and the user experience positive," says van Handel, the record company CEO. "Street Team members need only focus on finding new acts and bringing them to our music community," van Handel adds.

"At the end of the day, we are paying people to do something they think is great: talk about and listen to music," said Honetschlaeger. Any worries about the style or content of the music that will be brought in? "No, because the fans are always right when it comes to their favorite bands."

New Feature Is Available At No Cost For Any Artist On The BETArecords.com Site.

BETA Records (www.betarecords.com) and founders Chris Honetschlaeger and Georg van Handel are making it possible for independent musicians to take advantage of the communication and promotional advantages of ringtones.

"The new BETA Ringtone Widget allows artists to copy and paste a personalized ringtone code into any forum, blog, or website," Honetschlaeger says. Through a custom code, artists' pictures and songs pass into a standalone interface enabling ringtones to be sent from any Internet environment to mobile phones around the globe. Thousands of artists on the BETA Records roster can utilize this feature without charge.

"Up until today, the ability to quickly and easily make and distribute a ringtone from a song was difficult for unsigned artists," van Handel states, "but now it's easy and doesn't cost a thing. This is part of our ongoing effort to bring modern distribution and interactive tools to every indie artist across the music community," van Handel adds.

Each advancement in distribution and promotion brings independent artists closer to enjoying all the advantages formerly reserved for artists signed to one of the four major record labels (Warner, Song/BMG, EMI, Universal).

"Getting music to fans, friends, and professional organizations like ad agencies or radio and television broadcasters no longer depends on major label representation," notes Honetschlaeger, "and the ringtone widget is just one more example of how indie labels are getting more 'major' every day."

"Who says YOU can't go on stage?"

Berlin, May15th 2006: worldwide more than 110 million albums sold, over 2,500 live shows in 50 countries with more than 32 million fans in attendance - these numbers speak a very clear language: Bon Jovi, the Rock-Superstars from New Jersey, are one of the most successful contemporary bands. This statement was once again proved last Saturday in the LTU Arena in Düsseldorf. Performing in front of 50,000 fans, Bon Jovi sold out their kick off show for their European tour.

During the occasion of Bon Jovi's newly released album, "Have A Nice Day," and the subsequent world tour, emerging bands from Germany are given the chance of a lifetime: The band members of Jon Bon Jovi are searching for a Support-Act for the upcoming MEGA shows in Stuttgart (May 27 on the Cannstatter Was'n) and Munich (May 28 in the Olympiastadium).

Simply put: A newcomer band will be given the opportunity to play a thirty minute live-show, playing original Bon Jovi songs in front of 75, 000 at each event! Bands that are eligible may be from anywhere within the Republic of Germany, with the exception of bands, which are already signed to a label or are primarily cover bands.

The two winning bands will be determined through an "Online-Voting" system - this way Bon Jovi's fan base has the final say in who will heat up the stage of this years "Open-Air-Highlight". Bon Jovi, who already established some success in the early 80's as the opening act for the band "Scandal", are offering up-and-coming bands the chance to be well known over night.

A quote from Jon Bon Jovi about this event: "When we started out, we were completely unknown and now we are larger than we could have ever imagined. We want to offer an opportunity to newcomer bands to showcase in front of a mega audience. This way the new generation of Rock Bands can experience what we are allowed to experience on a daily basis."

The entry phase for bands has started! On www.betarecords.de all contestants can apply immediately by uploading their music.

Sven Kilthau-Lander, Senior Director Promotion Universal Music Deutschland (International Division): "For Bon Jovi to share their success and stage with an unsigned band is a true sign of greatness. We are very excited about the competition and will watch each band very closely on behalf of Universal Music. The deadline to apply ends on May 23, 2006 at 12 noon."

Appropriately, for the start of their European tour in the LTU Arena in Düsseldorf last Saturday, Bon Jovi played their current single for the first time in public, " Who Says You Can't Go Home," it drove the audience wild.

For a long time Bon Jovi as a band has become an event you can't miss.

BETA Records provides singers, songwriters and musicians with a website platform to promote their songs and videos to music enthusiasts, industry executives, A&R agents and record labels. MusicIP's technology will provide BETA Records with an infrastructure for rigorous track identification, metadata, acoustic discovery, and more using the actual musical attributes of the submitted songs. That infrastructure will also be used to provide a music search engine interface affording unparalleled discovery of unsigned artists in the BETA Records database.

"Our goal is to democratize the music business by creating a network of emerging artists and fans looking to discover new music," says Georg van Handel, CEO of BETA Records. "The decision to license MusicIP's technology platform was a natural fit to take our offering to the next level."

The BETA Records website, www.betarecords.com, profiles musicians by name, gender, career, instrument, song, genre, and location, making advanced searches easy and results effective for record labels looking to find genre specific unsigned artists ready for record deals or gigs. The searches will now be powered by MusicIP's innovative new Interactive Playground interface, which provides an impressive visual representation of acoustically similar tracks, as well as artist/album information.

"MusicIP and BETA Records have a similar goal to connect musicians and fans looking for new music," says Dr. Matthew Dunn, CEO of MusicIP. "All of our technology is designed to help listeners discover new music, help musicians find new fans, and help music enterprises sell more music."

About MusicIP

Known as the Global Music Search Engine, MusicIP provides a complete digital-music platform, with scalable services and products for every major industry niche. Founded in 2000, MusicIP provides revolutionary solutions that connect listeners, artists and enterprises. For music enterprises, MusicIP provides a complete framework for providing track identification and music discovery, spanning from consumer-electronics devices to large-scale label and commerce applications. In addition, MusicIP gives musicians a new marketing edge with a service called ListenerLink that provides global track exposure. Consumers can rediscover their music and discover new music with MusicIP's amazing playlist firmware in partner devices, and in the company's free MusicIP Mixer for all desktop platforms. For more information, visit www.musicip.com.

Diesel-U-Music gives the next generation of artists both an industry and public platform on an international scale, bringing them out of their bedrooms and garages and showcasing their talents across three genres: Rock, Urban/Hip Hop and Electronic.

Entries will be accepted from May 1 - June 25, 2006. The finalists from each territory around the world will be chosen and announced in July, winning the opportunity to participate at the Diesel-U-Music Awards in London this October to perform in front of a huge international audience.

To find out more, GOTO
BETA Records - www.betarecords.com
Diesel-U-Music - www.diesel-u-music.com