Comments on: Is Owen Van Natta The New CEO Of Project Playlist? And Further Rumors.

By: » Van Natta takes helm at Project Playlist « Poncheg.com - State & Community News Blog

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 20:40:12 +0000

[...] He had already been an investor in the music discovery company, and there have been blog reports about his new gig for several weeks now. [...]

By: Confirmed: Owen Van Natta Finds A Home At Project Playlist; Bob Pittman Invests | AmericanNewsWorld

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 11:02:24 +0000

[...] been digging on this story for weeks, but the company wouldn’t confirm the rumors and actually asked one of our writers to leave their office when we sent him over there to figure [...]

By: Confirmed: Owen Van Natta Finds A Home At Project Playlist; Bob Pittman Invests

Confirmed: Owen Van Natta Finds A Home At Project Playlist; Bob Pittman Invests — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 04:58:50 +0000

[...] been digging on this story for weeks, but the company wouldn’t confirm the rumors and actually asked one of our writers to leave their office when we sent him over there to figure [...]

By: Project Playlist Hires Owen Van Natta As CEO. They Just Won’t Admit It.

Project Playlist Hires Owen Van Natta As CEO. They Just Won’t Admit It. — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 20:36:14 +0000

[...] is now well past speculation. Owen Van Natta, Facebook’s former Chief Revenue Officer and Amazon’s former Vice [...]

By: Phil

Phil — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 19:04:36 +0000

I work in the online media space. I buy ads on Playlist all the time…Playlist.com is, currently, the best kept secret in the online media game.

By: Prashant Singh

Prashant Singh — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 18:20:06 +0000

@AK you should work in sitcom industry . you can be a goo story writer

By: Craftee

Craftee — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 17:59:01 +0000

Another hunch – MySpace – where PL.com actually gets 80%+ of its usage (the only reason most people go to PL.com itself is to administer the songs that play when people hit their MS pages), has decided that it has no use for PL.com’s widget on its pages, now that it has launched MS music. So it declared some kind of war on the PL widget (a la Photobucket – which as we remember actually resulted in PB’s acquisition by MS, so no predictions from me on how this one ends!). And PL is lock-down trying to figure out how to respond…

Yeah OK it’s a shot in the dark… but I really don’t see how PL can survive if MS wants to get rid of them, and now that MS is aggressively pushing a service that does about 10-15X as much as PL does, with actual licenses, I don’t see why they’d continue to tolerate PL powering the music on so many MS pages. Sure some users will rebel as they did when PBucket was briefly banned from MS, but giving them a simple MS-powered alternative to a widget that they’re used to (which will take most people 5 minutes to program to their satisfaction) is a much different proposition than turning off all of their photos, and forcing them to rearchitect their entire page (which is what happened w/PBucket’s ban).

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 17:56:21 +0000

The site works for me.

By: AK

AK — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 16:53:25 +0000

Here’s a hunch: They are being bought by FaceBook and integrated into a new system called FaceBook Music that will work in conjunction to iTunes and rival MySpace Music. Van Natta would be the CEO of Face Book Music.

By: john

john — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 15:48:35 +0000

I was on their website yesterday and Tuesday, it hasn’t been down since Monday…

By: dint

dint — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 15:36:43 +0000

Owen was a VP at Amazon prior to Facebook and went to UC Santa Cruz. Your comments reek of ignorance, let alone helpful to this readership.

By: O__a

O__a — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 14:25:56 +0000

I love these Internet wonder kids who get lucky and are hailed as geniuses. Please tell me how much money this guy was able to generate as the CRO of Facebook?

Oh yeah – they are still working on a business plan…

If this is true I give them a year before they flail and fail.

Nothing at Facebook was done well and nothing at Facebook was done as a result of these ivy league brats.

By: Adam Wexler

Adam Wexler — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 13:45:55 +0000

I thought Owen was heading to MySpace as of a couple days ago…

Looks to me like he either A) likes a BIG challenge or B) doesn’t know what he’s getting in to because neither “project” has enough upside IMO.

Project Playlist will always have problems with the RIAA & MySpace Music has too much to overcome to be what they wanted to be on paper (just too much music out there)

By: Ørv

Ørv — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 13:23:10 +0000

Constructing this from a closed site and a few rumours…. I was/am dead serious!

By: ekerala

ekerala — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 12:45:26 +0000

Do you sleep at all ? :p

By: Michael Arrington

Michael Arrington — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 11:48:24 +0000

you’re kidding. right?

By: Ørv

Ørv — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 11:46:00 +0000

Slow news day, huh?

By: Michael Arrington

Michael Arrington — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 11:43:45 +0000

If he is, his first goal should be to get the site live. And then he should answer my emails.

By: jervitz

jervitz — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 11:42:21 +0000

Owen is NOT a ceo so if he gets the job it will be short lived.