David Hyman, who negotiated the sale of the MOG music service to Beats Electronics in July 2012, announced he has joined Chosen.fm, a stealth music start-up based in San Francisco.
Hyman was deliberately vague about his new company, saying that Chosen.fm is “a mobile application company focused on changing how we interact and engage with the performing arts.” The company, he said, will focus on unsigned artists and be “broader than music.”
Chosen is funded by Rhodium Group, an early stage venture firm based in Israel with offices in New York. Among Rhodium’s other investments are Outbrain, HopStop and Singr.fm, a music creation and auditioning platform that has not yet launched.
Hyman, a former marketing executive at MTV Networks, has a track record heading up music start-ups, starting with Gracenote, where he was president and CEO from 2000 to 2004. In 2005, he founded MOG, an on-demand music streaming service that he sold to Beats in 2012 for somewhere between $10 million and $15 million. MOG, which continues to operate, formed part of the technology that undergirds Beats Music, a music service set to launch Tuesday.
Just prior to signing up with Chosen, Hyman did a brief four-month stint as interim CEO of Pono, the high-resolution audio venture started by Neil Young.
“Chosen is right up my alley,” Hyman said in a statement the company released Monday. “Music is my passion, and I see this as an exciting opportunity to expand my interests into video and the broader spectrum of the performing arts.”