Just two months following the acquisition of FoxyTunes, and setting in place a bold new plan for Yahoo! Music, Ian Rogers, vice president of video and media applications at Yahoo, decided life at the top of a music startup called “TopSpin Media,” which describes itself “the future of digital artist services” looks more promising than his gig at Yahoo Music.
The outcome of another shake-up at Yahoo may have helped Rogers decide to walk away from a post where his sensible visions of music and the modern Internet-powered world made him an important figure.
Rogers had some serious designs in mind for Yahoo! Music and it is pitiable that we would not see them come to fruition. During his time at Yahoo, the company has had a number of outstanding successes in the media market — pictures at Flickr, released the new web-based Yahoo! Media Player, purchased FoxyTunes, and launched a new version of Yahoo Video — while continuing to fall behind Google in search share.
Rogers, though his acuteness will deceive you, is a long-time veteran of the music business. He helped start the Internet Underground Music Archive, and worked with the Beastie Boys on Grand Royal Records. Rogers also worked on Winamp in the early days with creator Justin Frankel and built a streaming music service called Muse.Net before joining Yahoo over four years ago.
His new company, Topspin Media, is a venture-funded set-up that aims to “help out independent artists make a living.” The company, which Rogers founded with Peter Gotcher and Shamal Ranasinghe, is developing Web applications that enable distribution and marketing of digital content.
This is a setback for Yahoo — Rogers is one of a couple of music industry executive who has an unambiguous vision for what the future of music should be.
Lately, Rogers has been in the news for vocalizing his opposition to copyright protection that has hamstrung digital music sales until only recently. Many in the industry acknowledge him for convincing record labels to finally give-up on digital rights management and sell music in the unprotected MP3 format. Apple was the first to offer DRM-free music from EMI, and Amazon rolled out its MP3 music store shortly thereafter.
Also last year Rogers stunned the industry for a second time when he told industry execs:
I would not allow Yahoo! spend any more funds in consumer inconvenience. I will tell Yahoo! to provide the funds they were going to offer me to build some splendid media applications to Yahoo! Mail or Answers or some other deserving endeavor. I personally do not have any more time to give and can not stand to see any more cash spent on pathetic attempts for control instead of building consumer value. Life’s too short. I want to delight consumers, not bum them out.
Although Rogers did not particularly gave any reasons for leaving Yahoo other than the promise of a new opportunity, there has been much uncertainty at the company as of late. Yahoo of late discarded its music store, opting to partner with Real’s Rhapsody instead.
Rogers will be joining as CEO of Topspin Media, having offices in San Francisco and his home base of Santa Monica. The initiative is “to help artists earn a living through software,” he says, but the company is currently in secrecy mode and is not disclosing its full plans. A beta will be launched shortly, upon which more details will be released.
“Having started my ‘career’ fourteen years ago working with artists and artist managers, it feels as if this is the opportunity I have been careening toward. I could not be more excited,” Rogers wrote in a blog post. “To say you should expect to hear a lot more from us very soon would be an understatement. As I always say, anything worth doing is worth over-doing.”
Rogers’ going away is a big loss for Yahoo, which is under pressure to remain relevant in both search and media. In addition, the company’s future has been up in the air ever since Microsoft made an unsolicited bid to buy it.