VentureBeat

John Battelle is interviewing both Chris DeWolfe, co-founder of MySpace, and Edgar Bronfman Jr., chief executive of Warner Music Group, on the future of music. They all agree that music is going to be social, and that will lead to monetization of something that has heretofore been pirated.

“When will MySpace Music have a leader?” Battelle asked, referring to the Fox-owned company’s long search for a chief executive of its MySpace Music division. DeWolfe made an offer after interviewing 40 people. He said he expects to make an announcement soon. He wouldn’t reveal more, but said the job was hard to fill because the person had to understand music, technology, and the social web as well. Battelle mentioned that rumors suggest that Courtney Holt of MTV will be named as the chief of MySpace Music shortly.

Battelle asked if Warner Music was different from other music companies on protecting its music from being copied. Bronfman said focusing on innovation rather than litigation was the right approach and to do it in a way that could monetize the music. About 20 percent of Warner’s revenues are coming from digital.

“Until MySpace Music came along, there wasn’t a whole ecosystem available,” Bronfman said.

“Who makes money from iTunes when you buy a song?” Battelle asked. “Apple makes money, and they deserve to make money,” Bronfman said. “There is no one channel that will replace the CD. Artists make money, Apple makes money. But it will take a whole series of business models and channels. Most of the revenue will not come from the physical CD sale, and potentially even the download.” Read the rest of this entry »

uPlayMe, the latest in a ever growing pile of companies offering a desktop application to let you connect with people through shared tastes in music, said it has raised a “multi-million” round of funding.

The New York company uses a recommendation engine, looking at the music you’ve played and letting you contact other users who have recently played the same music. It also works for videos, including those watched on YouTube, and other digital content, such as movies and TV shows.

The music feature is like a number of other companies, from Last.fm to Mystrands and The Filter, the latter two also having a download that searches your music including your iTunes library, and a player, like uPlayMe. uPlayM offers an IM service too, so you can chat with the people you befriend. A dashboard shows the music you’re listening too, and the music being listened to by others. It lets you sample or buy the music.

To get things humming, the company says it’ll give you $10 worth of iTunes if you invite five friends to join uPlayMe.

The investment comes from Warner Music Group, a major music label, Village Ventures, and other investors. Here’s the announcement. The specific amount was undisclosed.

The company was co-founded last year by Dan Pelson, a senior vice president at Warner Music Group, and Bo Peabody, a managing general partner at Village Ventures.

Warner Music Group is offering its entire music and video catalog for free streaming on imeem, a Web site focused on letting users share music playlists.

The music is currently live on the San Francisco startup’s Web site, the company told VentureBeat Wednesday evening.

Now imeem users can make playlists with Warner music. Warner, in return, will get a piece of imeem’s ad revenue.

So music from Depeche Mode, a Warner artist, can be played freely, for example. Press the play button on the widget below, for example, which we’ve just pulled from imeem.

This partnership is significant because it is the first time a major label has offered free ad-supported access to it entire catalog of music and video to such an online sharing site. It is also remarkable because Warner (along with other labels) had sued imeem less than two months ago for copyright infringement (our coverage; scroll down). See suit here.

Imeem has grown rapidly over the past year, bosting 16 million active users. Earlier this year, it arranged to pay a share of ad revenue to music content owners, as we reported here. It recently offered free ad-supported streaming of music from other labels, but not from the majors. Competitors such as SeeqPod (our coverage) haven’t cut such deals.