Days after
announcing his departure from private equity-owned music subscription service eMusic.com Inc., former CEO David Pakman has revealed his destination in a
blog post. Pakman's headed to
Venrock, where he'll join the firm's digital media team -- almost certainly becoming the first partner at the firm to have
played drums for
Squeeze.
Venrock has made few investments directly related to the music industry, but holds stakes in a
variety of digital media startups, including podcasting, mobile entertainment, and content development companies. Pakman joins 25 other investment professionals on Venrock's team, which is currently investing the $600 million
Venrock V fund. The firm made an early investment in Apple Inc. [
AAPL], the operator of the iTunes music retail store and eMusic's main competitor. Pakman himself worked at Apple in the 1990s, and co-created its music group.
Owned by the Dimensional Associates private equity unit of JDS Capital Management Inc., the indie-heavy
eMusic provides a subscription service that provides users a set number of DRM-free downloads each month, pricing songs well below the 99-cent benchmark most frequently offered by iTunes and other a la carte download services.
Pakman
became CEO of eMusic in 2005 after serving as its COO. He previously co-founded digital music locker service MyPlay Inc., sold to Bertelsmann in 2001. He'll be based in Venrock's New York office.
-- Paul BonanosSee May 6 post from Tech Confidential describing Pakman's appearance at Digital NARM
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