Official.fm, the online music management platform for professionals and prosumers, has expanded its operations to the United States and added to its executive team accordingly. The company has opened an office on each coast and brought on Lucas Gonze as chief technology officer, Jason Herskowitz as chief product officer, and Chuck Fishman as partnership relations director.
Herskowitz will work out of Official.fm’s office in Brooklyn, New York. He previously founded Prodigal Sun Records, an early convert to provide streaming audio clips of its artists online, in addition to holding key positions at Limewire, AOL, and TotalMusic, an online music initiative from Universal Music and Sony Corp. that its co-founders Universal Music and Sony Corp. killed off in 2009.
Gonze and Fishman will be based in the San Francisco office. Gonze is known for creating the .xspf standard for music playlists and other open source music technologies, as well as for his previous work with Mog, Yahoo! Music, and Webjay. Fishman managed Cisco’s partnerships with major media and entertainment companies, having previously developed new content programming ventures for The Wall Street Journal and CNET.
Official.fm raised $8 million in May, funding that undoubtedly came in handy for this expansion. Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, the company offers uploading and hosting capabilities, data management, analytics, embeddable/branded audio widgets and other tools for digital audio. Among the platform’s top users are record labels Kitsune, Fool’s Gold, BPitch Control and Sony/RED Distribution; artists Scoop Deville, Gemini and Madlib (pictured); and brands Diesel:U:Music Japan, Fabric London and We Love.
In other initiatives, Official.fm is fulfilling new content partnerships with the Pitchfork Paris Festival and with the True Til Def CMJ 2011 Showcase. It also launched a premium service tier for $30 a year that includes uploading as many as 200 tracks for distribution and tracking, a desktop track manager, advanced analytics, embeddable tour widgets, and the ability to offer fans downloadable playlists in exchange for email addresses.
Related links:
http://pitchforkmusicfestival.fr/en/
Photo of Madlib by Chris Woodcock, courtesy of Stones Throw Records
