Online music retailer eMusic.com Inc. is starting the search for a new CEO.
The company’s current CEO, David Pakman, who over a four-year period helped eMusic.com grow from about $7 million in sales to about $70 million, has accepted a new position at Venrock, a New York equity investment firm.
Pakman, who joined eMusic.com, No. 294 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, in 2004, will remain with the company in a transition capacity until the end of the year. EMusic.com has retained Barlow Group, a Connecticut executive search firm, to recruit a new chief executive.
At Venrock, which has invested $2.2 billion in 417 companies resulting in 124 initial public offerings over the past 39 years, Pakman will focus on digital media investments in the New York area. Prior to joining eMusic.com, which is wholly owned by Dimensional Associates Inc., the private equity arm of JDS Capital Management Inc., Pakman held senior management positions at Myplay Inc., BeMusic, N2K Entertainment and Apple. Pakman currently serves on the board of the National Association of Recording Merchandisers and is a former board member of the Digital Media Association in Washington, D.C.
In a recent blog posting Pakman says eMusic.com is set for rapid growth. “In the past five years, we have defied all expectations to grow an ‘indie’ only music retailer from $7 million to $70 million in revenue,” he wrote. “We increased subscribers more than five times from where we started. We took a broken business from Vivendi Universal and turned it into the second largest digital music retailer in the world, on top of a newly enhanced targeted direct marketing machine.”
In August eMusic.com, which claims the title of the largest retailer of independent music, reported that its worldwide catalog exceeded 4 million tracks from more than 40,000 record labels.
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