Playlist Hires New CEO and Raises Close to $20M from the Pilot Group
By Azam on November 11, 2008 
Playlist the music discovery startup has new CEO Owen Van Natta and raises close to $20M from Bob Pittman’s Pilot Group. Van Natta was intrigued by the opportunity in Project Playlist and was an early investor in the company experiencing viral growth. Playlist has grown quickly to become one of the larger music communities on the Web, claiming that more than 38 million music fans monthly, tens of millions page views daily, and extends further with widely distributed embeddable widgets.
“Discovery around music is exploding on the Internet,” said Van Natta. “And the company that does the best job of taking advantage of that is really going to be huge.”
“I am excited to be building a company again,” said Van Natta, who has taken several months off since he left Facebook in February.
Music discovery is not a new concept and has plenty of competition on the web. Playlist will need to evolve the business to generate revenues and make nice with music labels. Earlier, Playlist was sued by the Recording Industry Association of America on behalf of nine record labels. Also, the legality of the current business comes into question based on music recommendation based on search results that sometime links to illegal downloads. Most likely Playlist will evolve in some form of sharing agreement form advertising and/or portions in the form of royalties.
Van Natta had an excellent vantage point form previous role at facebook. He was responsible form dealing with the music industry while at facebook and understands the business models and the concern and apprehension of the players involved in music industry.
Competition
The music landscape is getting crowded and quite complex with number of players and various strategies employed to make some money out of digital music media. In fact, Van Natta was previously consider for the CEO job at MySpace Music. Facebook was looking to partner with the industry and was looking to stream music from facebook with music streaming partner to avoid royalty issues. Other companies like imeen and iLike are offering competing offerings. It will be interesting to see how Playlist will need to address the challenges in market. Van Natta in the CEO leadership position will need to navigate through the highly competitive landscape and come up with a winning business model.
Van Natta Bio
Van Natta previously held positions at Facebook’s serving as COO and also Chief Revenue Officer. Van Natta joined Facebook in the fall of 2005 and early days of the of network rise. Before facebook, Van Natta was with Amazon and help position VP of Worldwide Business and Corporate Development and was part of the founding team of A9, the Amazon search company.
The Pilot Group
The New York based Pilot Group is the private investment firm led by former AOL president and MTV founder Robert (Bob) Pittman.
The Reading List
TechCrucnh Confirmed: Owen Van Natta Finds a Home at Project Playlist; Bob Pittman Invests
VentureBeat Project Playlist hires Owen Van Natta and raises $20M, but for what?
WSJ BoomTown Van Natta Takes Playlist CEO Job, With New Investment by Pittman
Categories : Media & AdsTags : Amazon, AOL, Bob Pittman, Facebook, MTV, Music Discovery, MySpace, MySpace Music, Oliver Van Natta, Playlist, Project PlayList