Former Yahoo Music GM Dave Goldberg made waves in early 2006 when he urged major music labels to kill DRM to give music fans the flexibility to listen to music on any device that they own. It sounded crazy at the time, but later on Bill Gates made similar statements and eventually Apple convinced EMI to begin to sell DRM-free music. The industry is now simply waiting for the other big labels to fall into line as well. April 2, 2007 may be the day DRM died, but people like Dave Goldberg planted the seeds far earlier. You can hear more about Goldberg’s views on DRM and the online music business in general in our podcast interview with him earlier this year.
Goldberg left Yahoo in February. He’s now joined Benchmark Capital as an entrepreneur-in-residence. That means he’s likely going to begin working on a new startup. No word on whether it’s in the music space or not, but whatever it is, given Goldberg’s willingness to shake up established business models, it’s likely to be interesting. I’ll be talking to him later today and will hopefully have more details to share.
Congrats to Dave, and one small error ‘Goldberb’ instead of Goldberg. Although I kind of like the sound of Goldberb even better.
I don’t know how much he has to do with the actual application, but the Yahoo Music player was quite a bit better than Musicmatch for me. Looking forward to whatever comes out of this.
Maybe he’ll start a YouTube Killer.
We haven’t had one of those yet!
What’s this guy’s claim to fame other than being a Yahoo GM? Long time Yahooligans always complain about their non-tech savvy management.
Mike, would love to meet him. My start-up is music focused but is a killer app designed to be a disruptor of some of the traditional music business models.
Mike – He was the founder of Launch in 1994, which eventually was acquired by Yahoo and became Yahoo Music.
He’s also married to Facebook COO (and former Google exec) Sheryl Sandberg apparently.
Mike, I wish him all the best and would love to me him.
my start ups are focused on the social media and they are veetube.com and mediarati.com just in case.
Why not just give him his 100 million cut and be done with it
?
apple didn’t convince EMI.. EMI contacted Apple about it.
@Mike – you might want learn how to use search before asking stupid questions about people.
Goldberg’s a visionary in the online music business. Unfortunately there are too few visionaries at Yahoo these days (instead there’s a visionless CEO who made $57M in a year the stock dropped 35%).
Mr. Purple Haze,
Thanks for the advice!!!
With all due respect, please do not use offensive and condescending language when posting online. Not everyone who reads and subscribes to these blogs is well informed netizen like yourself.
Thanks,
Mike.
Founder back in 1994? He looks young.
awesome. the web needs to maintain its entrepeneurs. no need to do things like try to buy EMI. ; )
I think any entrepruer in residence, is a “Made” man – most seem to be faces that will later be laid on top of someone elses idea.