Hot on the heels of the announcement that Owen Van Natta is unceremoniously leaving Project Playlist to run MySpace, Project Playlist has announced that John Sykes will be stepping in as CEO. Sykes is a co-founder of MTV, former president of VH1, and former president of Infinity Broadcasting, one of the largest radio broadcasting companies in the US. Sykes has been a boardmember at Playlist up until this point.
Project Playlist is a decidedly troubled company. After showing very impressive traffic numbers late last year, Playlist saw its traffic plummet after its embeddable playlists were removed from both MySpace and Facebook, which were threatened with lawsuits by the major music labels. Under the guidance of Van Natta, who only joined the company in November, the company had been making some headway with music industry. With his extensive background in the music industry Sykes may be able to keep Playlist on the right track, but Van Natta’s abrupt departure isn’t exactly a vote of confidence in the company.
Full press release below:
Palo Alto, Calif., April 24, 2009 – Playlist, the leading social media network where over 43 million music fans discover, create and share playlists, announced today that Board Member and industry veteran John Sykes has joined the company as Chief Executive Officer. As a Co-founder of MTV, President of VH1, and CEO of Infinity Broadcasting, Sykes brings extensive operating experience and industry relationships to the company as it partners with the music industry to provide advertising, subscription and e-commerce services to music consumers.
Owen Van Natta will serve as an Advisor to Playlist.
“John was a pioneer of the MTV revolution that forever changed the music industry landscape by giving fans a whole new way to discover and enjoy music,” said Bob Zangrillo, Chairman of Playlist. “Playlist looks forward to leveraging John’s tremendous track record operating media businesses and deep relationships in the music industry as it builds out the world’s premier social media service.”
“Creating and sharing playlists has become a phenomenon in our culture. With over 43 million registered users, Playlist is the number one site where fans go to discover, share and enjoy their favorite music,” said John Sykes, CEO of Playlist. “Leveraging our newly forged partnerships with the music community, we can now offer consumers deep access to their music and provide the industry with powerful new revenue streams.”
Playlist, one of the fastest growing sites on the Internet, continues to establish partnerships with the entertainment industry in an effort to offer a comprehensive collection of content that can be discovered, shared and monetized at www.playlist.com.
project playlist will probably become MTV’s answer to myspace… wouldn’t be surprised to see them work closely together
It’s a pity that some CEO’s in the music industry have apparently set out to destroy streaming music for some reason.
This seems like a perfect combination. I hope Sykes is the guy who finally has enough credibility and contacts to push music streaming to the next level.
(How did they get the co-founder of MTV and former President of VH1 to take the helm? Still scratching my head on this one. )
Sykes was already on the board of Playlist, therefore he has a vested interest in it’s success, and with his background is both very familiar with the space and with Project Playlist itself.
This is actually a bit of a coup for Playlist. I doubt they would have been able to get Sykes into this position had it not been an emergency situation. At the same time, I suspect we’ll see a sale of Playlist to MySpace in the near future.
A ‘decidedly troubled company’. Can you please stop pulling stuff out of your ass, for once? How is Playlist any more troubled than MySpace is. MySpace music loses heaps more cash every month. Most startups out there including your darlings Mahalo and Twitter don’t have a clue how to make a buck, while Playlist has been in the black for most of its existence.
Sigh. Another TC asshat.
it’s “decidedly troubled” because Mike is pissed they won’t give him any face time or tips.
playlist.com could be worth $500 billion….
jamwee.com <—projected to be worth $3 Billion in a few years
beta invites are available now
get over it..LOL