The following report is courtesy of John Hayward from Billboard.biz:

The metal/rock Download festival held at Donnington Park in England June 8-10 generated almost a million unique visitors to its dedicated Web site, promoter Live Nation U.K. announced today (June 20).

The event, headlined by MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE, LINKIN PARK and IRON MAIDEN, has a community Web site at www.downloadfestival.co.uk, which this year offered live streaming from the show to viewers around the globe.

It was the first time Download had provided the service, which was free. Live Nation U.K. senior VP of digital for international Mark Yovich says: "It was a fantastic success, and next time it will be even better because we will have more time to promote it."

London-based Yovich says the streaming "peaked when Iron Maiden topped the Sunday night bill, but since the main stage was being filmed for [U.K. terrestrial broadcaster] Channel 4 TV for the entire weekend the quality of the edit was amazing."

He adds that 80% of the festival's artists agreed to be streamed live, although My Chemical Romance and DRAGONFORCE turned it down on the Friday (June 8), as did MARILYN MANSON, Linkin Park and 30 SECONDS TO MARS on Saturday night. All 10 bands appearing on the Sunday agreed to have their performances streamed.

Live Nation says that eventually, 961,000 unique visitors from 128 countries stopped by the Download site. Of these, 188,585 were unique webcast viewers, hitting a peak of 25,000 watching concurrently at any one time. The United Kingdom accounted for 56% of the total, with 6% from the United States; Japan (4%), France, Spain and Germany (3%) followed.