Yahoo Loses Its Musical Soul
Michael Arrington
31 comments »
Yahoo Music Vice President Ian Rogers has resigned to join a new stealth music startup called Topspin Media as CEO.
This is a blow to Yahoo - Rogers is one of the few music industry insiders who have a clear vision for what the future of music should be. In 2007 he and former Yahoo Music GM Dave Goldberg told music insiders they must abandon DRM - a year later it was reality. Last year Rogers shocked the industry again when he told industry execs:
I won’t let Yahoo! invest any more money in consumer inconvenience. I will tell Yahoo! to give the money they were going to give me to build awesome media applications to Yahoo! Mail or Answers or some other deserving endeavor. I personally don’t have any more time to give and can’t bear to see any more money spent on pathetic attempts for control instead of building consumer value. Life’s too short. I want to delight consumers, not bum them out.
He had big plans for Yahoo Music and oversaw the sale of their subscription music service to Rhapsody. His team also bought FoxyTunes and released a browser based MP3 player.
I had the feeling that all the positioning, acquisitions and new product releases would culminate in an interesting strategy that would put Yahoo Music, at the very least, at the front of the debate around the future of music. Sadly, he leaves before that strategy could be finalized. That’s great news for Topspin, but terrible news for Yahoo and its users.
Damn… that quote from Ian last year was spot on. Topspin is lucky.
sad that Ian left yahoo! but i am sure yahoo! has something in pipeline for the massive music userbase that it already has…
Oh noes, yahoo is falling apart! run for your lives!
Sell to M$ now! I said now!
T¢ is telling us the truth, no hidden agendas here!
Oh noes, I better buy M$ stock now!
It’s gonna skyrocket to the moon!
I am gonna be rich!!!!!1!
I think it goes to prove you have to keep your employees happy, obviously topSpin can’t pay what yahoo! did, but my guess is equity won the day.
.rb
sorry for Topspin
Having worked with Ian, he’s a great guy and it’s a big loss to Yahoo.
Ian sounds like a guy I’d want running any part of my company. If I had a company.
Would Ian have been a beneficiary of any of the options?
It could have been an offer he couldn’t refuse but the post raises yet again the question of Yahoo’s corporate strategy and leadership capabilities…
Hmm, might be an opening for Lucas Gonze to move up. Not a bad possibility.
interesting that topspin’s aim is to help artists earn a living through software. he is obviously on a mission to repair the imaginary rift between artists and their “thieving” fans that industry execs have tried will into existence. hopefully, topspin will truly deliver value to artists and their fans as opposed to aggregators, licensors and labels.
Good for Rogers…bad for Yahoo.
dear ian - this is what i am willing to pay for music: $0.0. and i won’t look at ads either. your only hope is to find a genuinely talented artist willing to embed subliminal sound bite advertisements in the music itself, but i’ll find a way to strip those out too. here’s the reality - the twentieth century will mark that blip of time in world history where musicians got rich.
Yahoo music is such a mess i don’t blame him for surrendering. I used to love it circa 2005.
Whoopie is obviously not a music fan. Radiohead released an album for donations and the fans responded. I enjoy purchasing music and supporting the artists I love to keep them out of cubicles.
There is absolutely an opportunity to put bands in the driver’s seat, help them find an audience, put more cash in their pockets, and charge consumers less. The days of U2 building an empire are likely over, but there’s nothing wrong with middle class musicians making a living doing what they love.
@whoopie: ian said he’s trying to help musicians make a living.
If you’ve read *anything* of ian’s work, you’d understand he’s one of the more forward-thinking individuals in the digital music world. I’m pretty sure he has more things up his sleeve than your dimwitted single-hope vision.
Why the hate on musicians? Did they do something to you?
If I were Ian, I would have left too. I used to be a loyal MusicMatch fan until Yahoo got a hold of it. The very first release they screwed it up and the last time I checked it was screwed too.
This is just a theory for me since I haven’t worked at yahoo, but they seem to throw too many people to work on their projects instead of getting small, dedicated and enthusiastic people to work on it. Whenever you have too many people working on something, there are bound to be issues with the end product. Yahoo has a lot of potential in the music sector, but all of the products that I have ever used from them seemed bloated and clunky.
It had to be frustrating for Ian to try and control all of the various music projects going on, but I really do hope that he gave them a good road map to go off to try and fix their headless beast. I am tired of seeing them bump into walls. All of those bruises as well as the new one from Ian leaving have to have hurt.
Go Topspin go, love the team there, this is a huge win
Wow, this is a huge win for Topspin. Ian is one of those one in a million leaders who is insanely competent in a subject area, can write code in a pinch, and motivates the people who work with him to do their best work.
Indeed, I appreciate the Yahoo music section. I wish him the best for his new companies. I also think that this shows well Yahoo don’t really know so far what it’s going to do in the future, with the Microsoft threat above its head.
@yakov ROFL
IMO, if TC did an article on the “biggest hire for 2008″, this would be a shoe-in winner.
/cheers for Topspin!
Congrats to TopSpin. I’ve been working with them for the last couple months (helping them find top talent) and the folks over there are great. Hiring an industry luminary like Ian a testament to their innovative way of approaching the media/web paradigm.
…or at least a tried-and-true way of approaching the funding paradigm.
Huge loss for Y!, great vote of confidence in the future of TopSpin.
@Fallen: Great tune, man! On point.
@Oz: totally agree. I have purchased several MP3’s for $.89 per song. A great deal for good music.
I never bought anything from Itunes or others because of DRM.
I’ve been asking for MP3 files for a decade and they finally answered (don’t know why it took so long).
Its ironic how cheap people are that they won’t pay 89 cents for a song they love.
Instead they spend minutes-hours trying to get a low quality version for free.
Haters who think musicians aren’t entitled to make money have no talent so they don’t understand.
Oh almost forgot, best wishes Ian.
A big win for TopSpin.
As a band manager and a part of the digital music revolution, I can’t wait to see what TopSpin has to offer. Ian sounds like one of the brightest minds in the industry. I am automatically impressed that a startup lured Ian away from a position at a veteran company like Yahoo.
I am left with one question though: Does this say more about the state of Yahoo or the future of TopSpin??
Yahoo music is muck!
I worked with Ian in the early 90’s and he had a digital vision that was inspiring. We tried a number of times to get him to come to Sony Pictures but he wasn’t interested in joining a huge studio. I’m excited to see what he does at Topspin.
@EH
pleez, lucas gonze is a joke…he’s clueless, all talk and no delivery. and if you say anything related to xspf i will personally fine you. bummer about ian, he was the dog.
SAD
He was shaping the music well sad he left but good luck with future endevours