Airplay Direct chooses Nashville, attracts investors
By Milt Capps Last Updated 5:56 p.m.
Airplay Direct LLC CEO Robert Weingartz told VNC today his early-stage company will soon be headquartered in Nashville.With its founder still its primary fulltime employee, moving Airplay's flag from Atlanta to Nashville will not have much immediate economic impact. Weingartz has found others who are willing to be convinced about the future: He told VNC he recently Collins told VNC today, "It's a critical time for the company, [but] based on what I've learned so far, I believe Robert's definitely onto something and he's exploiting a real opportunity." Meanwhile, Airplay announced yesterday that another Nashville executive has taken a larger role with the enterprise: Performing-artist advisor Scott Welch of Scott Welch Management Inc. of Music Square now serves as an Airplay vice president for special projects, with principal responsibility for building music-entertainment industry alliances. In conversation with VNC, Weingartz seemed to attribute some of his willingness to embrace risk to his having been reared in the Long Beach-Compton, Calif., community, which is closely associated with Gangster Rap. If so, then he's a maverick who's attracted some buy-in: In addition to Collins and Welch, Weingartz said Airplay's first two "cash investors" were a pair of good friends, musicians Jim Hornaday and Clay Dubose, who retain their shares of the company. Also holding equity are Airplay advisory-board member Mike Kreher; Michael Harnett, a veteran of radio-station marketing, artist manager and television production; Steve Powell, who owns a software-development firm in St. Louis; Richard Shamy, who had partnered with Weingartz on a precursor venture; and, Airplay office manager Vickie Wood. Other Airplay stakeholders include Weingartz's father-in-law, John Gillin, a former Coca-Cola chief corporate marketing officer and one-time McCann-Erickson advertising executive. Airplay investor materials assert that while category leaders MySpace (with 5 million artists worldwide), Yangaroo and PlayMPE have established strong roles, Airplay is "the only company globally that delivers broadcast-quality music to radio stations worldwide free of charge." Airplay also says its research indicates "85 percent of the artists with an active catalogue are not having their digital music sent to radio stations and require that service." Against that backdrop, Airplay has accumulated, according to Weingartz, 18,400 artists and 3,600 radio stations among its registered users – a good slice of the world's 25,000 radio stations, he added. In addition, Airplay has already attracted industry accolades (Music Connection magazine included Weingartz among its 2008 top innovators); and, corporate sponsorships by the likes of SHURE Microphones and BEST Buy. The service has also been used for an exclusive release by Dolly Parton, as well as by Willie Nelson, Billy Bob Thornton and Los Lonely Boys, among others. Weingartz said the company has been obliged to focus, thus far, on expanding its share of "eyeballs," building an audience for future advertisers and sponsors. Collins explained his support for Airplay is currently in the form of a convertible-debt transaction, which allows him and the company to "keep the lights on" and "buy some time" to explore the firm's business model, capital-raising potential and competitive landscape, among other factors. The debt transaction, Collins explained, also allows all parties to defer setting a valuation for the company, on the cusp of launching a capital round. Collins told VNC he is exploring a number of technology deals in Nashville, beyond Airplay, something he's pursued since cashing-out of the family business: Collins succeeded his father, Tom, as president of Juris in 2004. The younger Collins had earlier served a stint as chief financial and chief information officer with the New York City-based e-commerce phenom DoubleClick Inc. (acquired a year ago by Google Inc.). In 2007, Collins was instrumental in selling Juris to Lexis/Nexis, a division of London- and Amsterdam-based Reed Elsevier PLC and Reed Elsevier NV. Many former Juris jobs in Brentwood have now moved to North Carolina. Weingartz said that, yesterday, he retained a lawyer for Airplay: James Dorsey, a partner in Atlanta-based Arnall Golden Gregory LLC. ♦
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