• The New York Times, Wednesday, November 12, 2008 11:16 AM

Following former Facebook No. 2 Owen Van Natta's decision to take the top job at music startup Project Playlist, New York Times technology columnist Saul Hansell asks, "What does Owen Van Natta know about how to make money from music on the Internet that hundreds of others before him couldn't figure out?" Project Playlist, after all, is yet another fast growing music site that record companies are accusing of promoting piracy.

"From the original Napster to Rhapsody and iMeem today, music has been the Bermuda Triangle of the Internet, swallowing anyone foolhardy enough to try to navigate its treacherous waters," Hansell says. The reason for this is simple: record labels want to charge higher prices for the right to play their music than service providers like iMeem can recoup from advertising or subscription fees.

Project Playlist fits right into that picture as a music search engine with its own media player that hopes to earn money by selling advertising and ringtones. Crucially, it also hopes to one day earn the blessing of the major record labels. "When you operate businesses like these, where you are trying to make money out of commerce and advertising, a lot of the leverage comes out of scale. Playlist does have scale," he said, to the tune of 9 million monthly users. Hansell points out that MySpace Music, by comparison, has 35 million users, and 5 million pages hosted by musicians and bands.

Read the whole story at The New York Times »