Digital music’s longest-lasting CEO other than Steve Jobs or much-lamented Wippit service’s Paul Myers, eMusic’s David Pakman is to leave the enduring company for a venture capital group at the end of the year, he revealed this week.
Pakman has watched stores from MTV, Microsoft, Sony, Yahoo, and AOL come and go. “We outlasted almost every other digital entity in the space,” Pakman said. “We’ve proven the business model, growing the company by five times. I’ve had an amazing team.”
The recent music industry deal with ISP’s could put power over music retail into the hands of the networks, undermining the good work done by the likes of iTunes, Napster and eMusic, eMusic CEO David Pakman warns.
As part of the deal between labels and ISPs to combat file-sharing in the UK, the music industry has made a commitment to license catalogue to ISPs in order that the latter are enabled to launch their own download services for customers.
And with the debate on net neutrality still actively ongoing, Pakman is concerned ISPs may eventually throttle bandwidth in order to favour their own services over those that pioneered legitimate download sales.
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