MICHAEL WEISS
President & CEO, StreamCast Networks
Entertainment industry veteran, Michael Weiss, is President & CEO of StreamCast Networks and CEO of its subsidiary MusicCity Network. The company is venture backed by Timberline Ventures, the Pacific Northwest affiliate of Draper Fisher Jurveston.
StreamCast Networks provides peer-to-peer technology and infrastructure to a variety of vertical markets. Its first application was launched in the media vertical through MusicCity Network. In a very short time, MusicCity has become one of the world’s largest peer-to-peer networks and its newly released Morpheus client has ranked in the Top Ten of all software downloads by CNET’s download.com since its debut on April 21.
Previously, Weiss was founder of WebRadio.com and served as its Vice President & General Manager. WebRadio.com, a subsidiary of GEO Interactive Media Group, Ltd. (GIM:LSE), transmits terrestrial radio stations’ signals on-line through the innovative EMBLAZE “plug-in free” streaming media technology developed by GEO. WebRadio.com was valued at $441 million during Weiss’ tenure. Previously, Weiss was VP, Strategic Marketing for GEO.
Prior to GEO, Weiss held several positions at Sirius Publishing, Inc from 1994 to 1998. As Vice President of Entertainment & Business Development, he negotiated and acquired the digital rights to movies and video programs from major motion picture studios, independent production companies and record labels and served as company spokesperson for its MovieCDä product line. As VP, Marketing, he played a key role in Sirius' trajectory as a major player in the multimedia industry--growing annual company sales from $100,000 to $22 million within nine months.
Previously Weiss spent 16 years in the home video industry. From 1989 to 1994 he held key executive positions at several video trade organizations and served as President & CEO of the American Video Association. From 1986 to 1989, Weiss held executive positions in marketing and business development at J2 Communications / National Lampoon where he secured national strategic promotional partners and developed corporate sponsorships. At J2, he pioneered the video industry's use of direct response TV marketing, developed and implemented the industry's first interactive telepromotion campaign and created the first interactive sweepstakes promotion.
Weiss was in the forefront of the home video software industry and established one of the world's first video software retail specialty chains in 1978, the first in Chicago. He played a pivotal role in national legislative lobbying efforts by creating a nationwide grass-roots effort by rallying the independent video retailers to help defeat the Motion Picture Association of America's (MPAA) proposed congressional legislation to ban video rentals.
Weiss' roots are in the music industry. In 1974, he helped establish one of the music industry’s first major record pools, Disco-Tech, Inc. in Chicago, helping to gain exposure of new recording artists that could not obtain radio airplay. He was one of the first breed of club deejays that innovated live "house mixes." Previously, he was College Promotion Manager for Columbia Records in the early 1970's in Miami. While there, he organized a first-ever promotional midnight movie screening—so successful that local theater chains adopted his concept and began to regularly schedule midnight movies for the public.
Weiss attended the University of Miami where he majored in mass communications and studied advanced film and television production at Columbia College in Chicago. He has been a keynoter and guest speaker at numerous Internet, entertainment, and broadcasting conferences including CES, NAB, VSDA, Digital Hollywood, Streaming Media, South X Southwest, Internet World, Paul Kagan, R&R, Digital Distribution & The Music Industry and Radio Ink's Internet Radio Conference. When Weiss was at the helm of WebRadio.com, Radio Ink Magazine compared Weiss with Steve Case and Bob Pitman of AOL, Jerry Yang and Mark Cuban of Yahoo! and Bill Gates of Microsoft as "the media barons of tomorrow" predicting that their companies will become the new media giants that will control the eyes and ears of the world. He hopes to achieve that goal through MusicCity.com.