After an
arduous selection process, social networking giant MySpace Inc. has finally
found a leader for its MySpace Music joint venture with the four major record labels. Former MTV Networks executive
Courtney Holt has formally accepted the job, following several weeks of
rumors suggesting he would do so. Holt will be president -- not CEO -- of the joint venture.
Holt, pictured at left, will take the helm on January 6, 2009. That will be more than nine months after MySpace
first announced the formation of the JV, and more than three months after it
launched its streaming music service and DRM-free store
without a leader. The new site
offers access to millions of free songs from the major labels' catalogues as well as select independent labels and distributors, supported by advertising to offset royalty payments.
Earlier this month, MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe
told an audience at the Web 2.0 Summit that the company had interviewed 40 candidates but made only one formal offer, presumably to Holt. He was executive vice president of MTV's digital music unit, and prior to that, senior vice president of new media and strategic marketing with the Interscope Geffen A&M division of Universal Music Group.
The MySpace Music job is thought to be a highly political one, since whoever holds the position will have to satisfy the leadership teams of all four stakeholding labels, MySpace itself, and News Corp. [
NWS], which acquired MySpace in 2005.
Most recently, former Facebook COO Owen Van Natta's name
surfaced as a potential fit, but he instead
took over as CEO of another social music site, Project Playlist Inc., in which he had previously invested. Other candidates who came and went included Topspin Media CEO
Ian Rogers; former AOL executive
Jim Bankoff, now with buyout firm Providence Equity Partners;
BigChampagne Inc. chief executive Eric Garland; and Benchmark Capital entrepreneur-in-residence
Dave Goldberg, formerly of Launch Media Inc. and Yahoo Music.
Although the pre-launch process was
plagued by internal conflicts, MySpace Music said it streamed more than a billion songs in just a few days after launch, and more recently scored a coup by previewing the eternally-awaited Guns N' Roses album,
Chinese Democracy. Meanwhile, competitors in the social music arena such as
Imeem Inc. and
iLike Inc. are reportedly on the block.
-- Paul Bonanos
See
Aug. 11 and
Nov. 6 posts from Tech Confidential about MySpace Music's CEO search
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Hopefully, he will have the desire to push the envelope with the technology that is already available. I’d love see Myspace Music actually innovate the music industry for real. First, as anyone that has seen CNN.com Live knows, internet video streams are like watching television now. Myspace Music has a real opportunity to become a global streaming version of MTV. I’d love to see a weekly live music program with an in-studio audience, a global streaming version of the Myspace Music Awards (similar to the MTV music awards but worldwide), and other content that will engage. What artist wouldn’t want to play to Myspace Music’s global audience of 160,000,000. Imagine debuting a new CD that way. And since it’s the web, the audience could push one button below the live video streams and have access to every song the artist ever did. It would be a live version of a point of purchase display that reaches 160,000,000. Now that’s what I call revolutionary.