RealNetworks and BackWeb Announce Collaboration to Create New Digital Music Delivery Service for Consumers

New Internet Subscription Service Enables Consumers, for the First Time, to Discover and Receive Automatic and Personalized Delivery of Digital Music

SEATTLE and SAN JOSE, CA — January 20, 2000 — RealNetworks®, Inc. (Nasdaq: RNWK), the recognized leader in media delivery on the Internet, and BackWeb® Technologies (Nasdaq: BWEB), a leading provider of push for e-business solutions, today announced an agreement to integrate BackWeb's Polite™ push technology into RealJukebox™ to create a first of its kind Internet music delivery service for consumers. This new free subscription-based delivery service – code named "Quicksilver" – will enable RealJukebox users to automatically discover and receive CD-quality samples and full-length songs from their desired genre of music. In a separate agreement, the two companies today announced that RealNetworks would make a $15 million minority investment in BackWeb Technologies.

"We are excited to join forces with BackWeb Technologies to further accelerate the electronic distribution of music," said Rob Glaser, chairman and CEO, RealNetworks, Inc. "With today's announcement, more than 20 million RealJukebox users will be able to automatically discover and receive digital music from their favorite genres of artists."

"By collaborating with the world leader in media delivery on the Internet we will help stimulate the growth of the online music industry by giving consumers a revolutionary new, personalized music experience," said Eli Barkat, chairman and CEO of BackWeb Technologies. "With the broad consumer reach of RealJukebox, BackWeb's Polite push technology will soon become an integral part of the digital music market."

This new music delivery service, "Quicksilver," will integrate BackWeb's Polite push technology into RealJukebox to provide subscribing users a new way to discover and receive music. Digital music is transmitted to the user's PC in the background during times when the user is not using the full capacity of their Internet connection. This new service is designed to enable users to receive requested digital music with no impact on the performance of other Internet applications such as email, chat, streaming media and browsing. Users will get to choose the genre of music they're interested in (e.g. jazz, classical, alternative, 80's rock, hip hop, etc.) and then automatically receive digital music from artists within their pre-selected music genre. RealJukebox will notify users when the new music has arrived to their desktop.

"Quicksilver" delivers this service to Internet consumers, ranging from dial-up modem connections to high-speed connection services, including DSL, cable modems, satellite, ISDN and T1. The companies plan to launch the service later this year.

About RealJukebox
RealJukebox turns PCs into the best way to experience music by allowing consumers to listen to their favorite music at their convenience, record their personal CD collections to their PC hard drive, find and download music from the Internet, organize and personalize music collections, and take their music anywhere through the use of portable music players, and removable storage devices such as CD-R's and Iomega Zip/Jaz/Clik drives. RealJukebox has been downloaded by more than 21 million unique users in the eight months since its launch in May 1999, making it the most popular music jukebox software available.

About BackWeb Polite Push Technology
With BackWeb's patented Polite push technology, Global 2,000 companies can deliver multimedia-rich digital packages of any size or format, including audio, video, graphics and html. BackWeb's Polite Agent™ avoids disrupting the consumer by using only available bandwidth and politely delivering the information in the background.

About BackWeb Technologies
BackWeb Technologies is a leading offline Web software company. BackWeb extends the value of technology investments by offering mobile and remote employees offline access to portals, intranets and other Web-based applications and content. The company's products reduce network costs and improve the productivity of an increasingly mobile workforce. At the core of BackWeb's products is its patented Polite® synchronization technology that can distribute large amounts of data even over narrow bandwidth connections. BackWeb® customers include market leaders such as Boehringer Ingelheim, Centocor, Eastman Kodak, GE Healthcare, Guidant, HP, KLA Tencor, Lam Research, Pfizer and more than one hundred other companies. BackWeb also has strategic reseller alliances with software industry leaders: Plumtree, SAP and IBM. The company is headquartered in San Jose, Calif. and Rosh Ha'ayin, Israel. For more information, visit www.backweb.com or call (800) 863-0100.

Statements in this news release, which are not purely historical, are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. Securities laws, including statements of beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions regarding the future. Examples of these statements include, but are not limited to, the ability of BackWeb software to allow customers to gain mobile, disconnected use of their portals and help increase field sales and field service productivity, the integration of BackWeb software with BEA products will help developers extend portal applications for offline use without changing the way they work, and the ability of the resulting applications to help field sales and service organizations realize maximum productivity, cost savings, and process acceleration gains while disconnected from the network. Actual results could differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include unforeseen technological issues related to use of the BackWeb software, deployment issues related to implementation, unforeseen software errors, competitive factors and business and expense factors that may affect the perceived efficiencies from use of BackWeb's products, and the risks and uncertainties detailed from time to time in BackWeb's periodic reports and registration statements filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. BackWeb assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this press release.