Dmitry Shapiro, the founder and CEO of shuttered video site Veoh, is joining MySpace Music today as Chief Technology Officer. Shapiro will report directly to Courtney Holt, President of MySpace Music.
In his new role, Shapiro will be “responsible for all aspects of technical developments for the MySpace Music platform”, including new versions of artist profiles and tools as well as the overall music experience on MySpace. Shapiro is known for founding Veoh, whose assets were recently sold to Israeli startup Qlipso. Veoh has had a troubled history, facing copyright litigation with Universal Music Group. While the startup Veoh won a summary judgement in its favor last year, the lawsuit proved to be too costly and distracting. Veoh was forced to file for filing for bankruptcy in February.
Prior to founding Veoh, Shapiro was the Founder and CEO of P2P network security company Akonix Systems. Interestingly, Shapiro is an angel investor and Chairman of Irata Labs, the company that built the Twitter game Spymaster. MySpace’s parent News Corp just bought Irata Labs in April.
MySpace has seen an exodus of talent over the past few months, so it’s nice to see a key hire at the social network for change.
