Sonic Foundry to Sponsor the 'WOMAD' Festival

Sonic Foundry (Nasdaq: SOFO), a leading developer and marketer of media authoring tools and digital audio software for Windows[R], announced today it is now a proud sponsor of the World of Music, Arts, and Dance (WOMAD) Festival. The Company is sponsoring the 'Troubadour Stage' at this year's festival, which is scheduled to take place at Marymoor Park in Redmond, Washington, from July 30th through August 1st.

The idea for WOMAD was originally inspired by recording artist Peter Gabriel in 1980, and the first WOMAD Festival was actually held in 1982. Since then, the festival has succeeded in introducing an international audience to many talented artists and has also allowed many different audiences to gain an insight into cultures other than their own.

As with all previous WOMAD events, the central aim of the 1999 Festival is to bring together and to celebrate many forms of music, arts, and dance drawn from countries and cultures all over the world. This year's WOMAD Festival will feature more than 35 artists from around the world performing at eight different venues, and it will also offer a variety of artist workshops designed to provide visitors with hands-on, highly interactive forums on how to use technology in the creation of music.

Sonic Foundry will also participate as an exhibitor at the festival, providing product demonstrations of its popular ACID[TM] loop-based music creation tool, as well as other digital audio software products. The ACID demos will specifically show visitors how easy it is for any PC user to create their own 'world music' using existing Sonic Foundry loop libraries, such as Ethnicity, Opium, and the Bill Laswell Sampler, as well as the Company's recently released Robin Storey: Rapoon and Marc Anderson: Dragon Dance libraries.

"We are very pleased to welcome Sonic Foundry as a sponsor of this year's WOMAD Festival," said Maura Ahearne, Sponsorship and Promotions Manager for Seattle-based One Reel, the management company responsible for the WOMAD event. "To ensure a high quality festival, we are very selective of the partners who come on board, and Sonic Foundry clearly met all of our requirements."

"The WOMAD Festival has established itself as one of the most renowned music festivals in the world, so we are indeed proud to be a sponsor of this exciting event," said Roy Elkins, Sonic Foundry's Vice President of Sales and Marketing. "The interactive nature of this festival makes it an ideal environment for us to show people firsthand how simple it is to create their own world music using our ACID music creation tool."