(29 September 2006 7:00 pm)

MUMBAI: MSN, a leader in delivering compelling entertainment to Indian consumers, anounced a multiyear global content distribution agreement with Control Room, the No 1 provider of live digital entertainment and the producers of Live 8.

The partnership will see MSN as the exclusive online worldwide destination for Control Room’s live music programming, via live and on-demand streaming.

Officially launching in the UK on 2 October, the agreement means that nearly 465 million visitors to MSN worldwide, including millions of fans in India will have access to an exclusive performance from John Legend.

The multiple-award-winning singer, songwriter and pianist’s live Royal Albert Hall performance will be available at http://msn.co.in/johnlegend from 16.00 GMT. Additional artists already scheduled to appear on MSN through the relationship with Control Room include Rod Stewart from the Nokia Theater in NYC and John Mayer from Webster Hall in NYC.

The partnership will further allow visitors to MSN video ongoing access to live concerts from the most popular, top-selling musical artists as well as today’s most talked-about breakthrough acts.

"With the video content market surging as it has been in the last year since Live 8, we have proven that there is a robust market for a company like ours to change the way live entertainment is consumed, now and in the future," said CEO of Control Room Kevin Wall.

"With MSN, we have found a global partner that sees the value and profit in providing our rich and cutting-edge live entertainment content to its consumers worldwide,"added Wall.

General Manager for the MSN Network Greg Nelson said,"With this collaboration, artists now have an extremely valuable, cohesive, global marketing and promotion avenue to reach and connect with fans worldwide, while in turn it creates another key access point for consumers to get high-quality content from the musicians they love."

With this agreement in place, MSN and Control Room will embark upon a deep, exclusive content collaboration, combining Control Room’s expertise in creating and delivering live music events for cross-media distribution with the feature-rich video programming of MSN and its global reach and branded entertainment appeal to advertisers.

Further, through this agreement, Microsoft Corp. may stream Control Room shows to other platforms, including Xbox Live, MSN Messenger, Microsoft Windows Media Player and Windows XP Media Center Edition.

The Control Room team will leverage its deep and broad experiences, relationships and skills accrued while creating and digitally distributing more than 59 shows in the past year to deliver high-quality live music programming to MSN. Control Room maintains the same seasoned management team, many of whom worked on the now historic Live 8, and also continues content distribution relationships with television, radio, theatrical and retail partners worldwide.