Music Ally

David Eun was one of Google’s key execs when it came to dealings with the music industry – his MidemNet keynote interview last year famously began with the question ‘Why are you trying to screw the labels?’.

However, Google’s content partnerships boss is now leaving the company to take up a position as president of AOL Media and Studios. He’ll be in charge of the company’s network of content sites.

“David brings an impressive breadth of media experience to AOL at an exciting juncture as AOL forges a new future as a high-scale producer and partner in the content space” says the internal memo from CEO Tim Armstrong.

Google’s VP of content partnerships David Eun may be softly-spoken, but his message for the music industry was loud and clear in yesterday’s MidemNet interview: “Allow innovation to thrive, encourage it… you have to iterate, you have to keep on experimenting. And unless the music industry allows that to happen, we’re still going to be scratching our heads looking for new music solutions.”

The clear implication was that this isn’t happening. “There is a culture of ‘here’s my interests – meet them. And if you can meet them, maybe you can have access to our content’,” said Eun. “And in that approach, there’s often not really a consideration of the other person’s business – ‘If you can’t make it work, that’s your problem’.”

Eun was keen to stress that there are plenty of people within the major record labels who “get it”, but that also there are plenty who don’t. “There are a lot of people who who are still very defensive,” he said. “Sorta protecting business models, protecting what they know.”

But he returned to his theme of advising the industry not to suffocate or slow down innovative startups later in the interview. “If you know you’re in the business of harvesting tomatos, allow them to grow and become ripe. Don’t just pick little green ones off the vine.”

For more on Eun’s views, including why Google ISN’T trying to screw the labels with YouTube, read our liveblog.

What, you may be wondering, does Google have to say for itself at MidemNet this year? David Eun is VP of content partnerships at the company, and he’s being interviewed on-stage by TAG Strategic’s Ted Cohen.

First question: “Why are you trying to screw the record labels?” Hurrah! “There is this presumption that people are part of the problem, not part of the solution,” fires back David. “The presumption that we’re trying to screw the labels is not true, obviously, and for me it’s just unproductive.”

So, he rocks the line about Google not creating its own content, but just organising other people’s. Cohen asks about YouTube traffic. “Every minute of the day we have over 15 hours of video being uploaded to YouTube,” he says. “We have hundreds and hundreds of millions of views being consumed every day, over 20 versions of YouTube around the world, and over half the videos on YouTube have some sort of comment or rating – a social interaction.”

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