September 15, 2000 – It's Rock & Roll Publishers Clearinghouse time as the Offspring announce the single biggest event in the brief history of downloadable music: Effective September 29th, the Offspring's new single, "Original Prankster," will be available in MP3 format from www.offspring.com. Following this, the band's forthcoming new album, titled Conspiracy of One, will be available in its entirety at www.offspring.com. What's more, every person downloading tracks from the album will have the option of automatically being entered in a drawing to win $1,000,000. The winner will be announced live on MTV on November 14th, the traditional retail release date of Conspiracy of One.

The million-dollar prize is being offered directly from the band. Neither sponsors nor record company funds are being used. The band's singer Dexter Holland asserts, "This money came directly to us from our fans. We feel it would be cool to redirect it back to them. We are trying to launch our album with promotions that are fan supportive rather than fan exploitative. We feel that giving them our music and letting them have back some of their money is a great way to show how much they mean to us."

Prior to the November 1998 release of the Offspring's Americana, the free MP3 of first single "Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)" was downloaded over 22 million times in ten weeks (as reported by Wired magazine), while Rolling Stone identified "Pretty Fly ..." as the number one most downloaded MP3 on the Internet. Americana went on to sell 10.5 million copies worldwide. The band's career worldwide sales exceed 26 million units.

Just as technology has made leaps and bounds over those last two years, plans for the download and release of Conspiracy of One are significantly more sophisticated. Anyone who purchases the actual CD will have the opportunity to use proprietary new technology, located directly on the physical compact disc, to launch into a coded part of the band web site and become a member of the Offspring Nation. Offspring Nation is a digital fan club offering incentives and benefits including subsequent exclusive downloads, animated films, gated chats with the artist, advance ticket sales and more. Dexter Holland says, "We decided that we would create a super fan club for those of our fans who actually buy our CD. The CD has a key in the CD Extra section that registers members to the Offspring Nation, our fan club. We figure since we make our music available to everyone for free this will act as a special acknowledgement to our fans who go to the trouble to buy our CD."