Former Amazon and Facebook executive Owen Van Natta is said to be a top contender for the CEO job of the new MySpace Music joint venture, multiple sources confirmed to us this morning. There are also a number of other candidates still being interviewed. Last month we posted a shortlist with a handful of them.
MySpace Music, an ambitious joint venture between MySpace and top music labels, is set to launch sometime this month. The project combines the music from three of the four major labels (Sony BMG, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group) with a rumored $120 million in cash from MySpace and its existing music properties.
Music download sales are just one revenue stream for the new venture. In addition to selling DRM-free music (singles, albums, and playlists), MySpace Music will iteratively also offer ring tones, concert tickets, merchandise (tshirts, etc.) and branded advertising campaigns. Amazon is said to be powering the music download part of the service.
Van Natta left Facebook earlier this year and has been said to be looking for a CEO spot at a new company. MySpace Music may be just the position he’s looking for.
Don’t count on a CEO announcement before launch, though. In an interview with MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe earlier this week at TechCrunch50, he made it clear that they’re willing to wait as long as it takes to find the right person for the job, and the search for a CEO certainly won’t delay the launch. In any case, DeWolfe and MySpace COO Amit Kapur themselves remain actively involved in the venture and plan to maintain leadership roles within it even after launch.
Skip to the 7:24 mark in the video below if you want to hear just about MySpace Music:
If Van has what it takes, I dont see why not.
stop with the “here’s me interviewing Chris DeWolfe, yum yum”, every opportutnity u get, god your so gay
I think this is a misguided play by MySpace. iTunes dominates the music download business, MySpace is seeing virtually no new growth in user-base and the major labels just can’t get a vision of the future of music sales & distribution. This one is destined for failure.
with the reach of myspace, I don’t put anything past them. Remember music is what got myspace to what it is today!
Darin
Domain Names that made sense!Domain location on the Internet is everything.
Domain Names that Made Common Sense
you’re a hipocrite…talking about how the MY in myspace defined them, and others jumped on the MY bandwagon too w/ little success…yet your site is a MY too
“my” has been permanently imbedded in the minds of the digital universe as a result of myspace with a newscorp spin. its called personalized online branding communication. said nothing about any site that used my would in any way automatically be successful. your lame. i got a channel for people like you.
http://seesmic.com/video/RLBVaQ0sYP
I’ll take the job - Master’s in CIS and have put together my own little venture, but for Indie artists (madtownlounge.com). Actually, nah - I prefer my hard work going for those that need the help getting their music heard
http://www.madtownlounge.com
why the rush for a ceo?
just make tom the hacker the ceo
It is interesting to see MySpace take this approach to handle ITunes.
It might turn out to be the ‘Adwords’ idea introduced by Google when they lacked a killer idea to generate revenue using the huge user base they accumulated with search.
Lets wait and see
So he was part of Amazon’s failed A9 service and then got kicked out of Facebook. What, on earth, makes him qualified to be CEO of Myspace Music? Am I missing something here?
Why don’t they just get the ex-Google guy who just left Cuil. I hear he’s looking for work…
http://www.SchoolShift.com
Your Experience. Your Life. Your School.
I think MySpace has a huge edge on iTunes from the perspective of the independent musician and should focus on that. This group of producers are growing daily and will challenge the traditional music industry (and iTunes which are very much affiliated with labels and marketing firms and have taken over as the new label) in the next 10 years. MySpace has always been about empowering the individual, self branding and self marketing. The MySpace music player is the ultimate differentiator and in my opinion is mostly responsible for the success of MySpace as a whole. By providing well executed tools and functionality to the MySpace band, and to the MySpace audience, they could easily start taking market from iTunes.
I speak from experience as I am a electronic music producer as well as running my own technology company JavaDojo. I write, produce, master and distribute my own music and sell primarily through my Snocap store on my MySpace band page (www.myspace.com/tracksthatflow) I am part of a growing community of producers fed up with labels and iTunes which take up to 90% of the sale price (sound familiar?) We want to sell our own music, on our own pages.
Where am I going, MySpace, find a CEO from the music industry, build the right functionality to empower the musicians themselves (sale tracking and marketing tools), deliver a MySpace Band Manager desktop application RIA, and take on iTunes for real!
Consumers love being in control of their shopping experience as well, and going to the MySpace Band page, seeing the brand, style and personality of the band, and being able to purchase music and merchandise FROM this brand page, is what they want. Down with the corporate middle man!
Martin Folb
http://www.javadojo.com
http://www.incamoon.com
Focusing on the ‘music store’ and partnering with labels seems to me to be a poor plan for MySpace.
Even stealing music is passé when you can just stream it whenever and wherever you want ala skreemr, songza, mixturtle, even MySpace (though they are missing the experience side of things).
Plus as has been said before MySpace built there market on the back of indies and yet those seem to be the musicians who are left out of this important and possibly significant change.
Live shows is where it’s at, which is why I built HearWhere based on data from MySpace.
http://www.HearWhere.com
If myspace expand their business with music, perhaps friendster and facebook will follow at the future.
First there was much attempts to show myspace is bigger and better than facebook. Now it’s all gone past. New pill is myspace music and itune, although myspace is no match for itune. Let them get the most qualified ceo on earth, myspace will go to myhell. Myspace has no future. It’s dying now. So don’t make much talk about it. It’s only noise. The final equation: myspace = myhell.
Internet Censorship & Internet 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFhbSolKWP0
It’s not going to happen. It is happening.
Michael - This should be front page material.
from paidcontent.org — “Chris DeWolfe believes that MySpace Music could generate enough money through ad sales, downloads, and eventually music-related e-commerce like T-shirt and concert ticket sales to put the industry back on its feet again”
T-Shirts, Concert Tickets, and Advertising. - everyone in the music business has been talking about these same “revenue themes” for ages - If this is the MySpace Master Plan to “put the industry back on its feet again (Chris DeWolfe)” and compete with the Apple (T-Shirts to compete with the iPod - oh boy) ,… good luck fellas….