A good friend of mine just updated his personal blog for the first time in months recently, and I thought this was as good a time as any to introduce the very cool startup that he’s been working on.
The company is called SpotDJ, and his blog post about it is here.
Scott has been a good friend ever since I met him through the CS 198 Section Leader program at Stanford, where he was one of the first section leaders I hired. Scott was one of those great student developers who didn’t just take Computer Science classes – he really wrote code. Shareware, mostly, for the Mac. Even then, Scott always shipped.
Scott had the misfortune of having an internship at Apple Computer in probably the most depressing time possible – in the Advanced Technology Group, in 1997, right as the entire group was disbanded. Since then, he’s done some pretty interesting things – working for several companies and even co-authoring a book.
Doing a startup is something that is very easy to talk about in Silicon Valley, but make no mistake about the fortitude it takes to really quit a good paying job and go out on your own. Scott is doing it right now, and SpotDJ is evolving into something really interesting.
I love the idea that instead of bidding on keywords (Google/Yahoo), you might actually target content/advertising based on a song. If they can crack some success measure like cost-per-click (cost per listen?) and some demand measure like click-through (selection? rating?), it’s a very interesting way to target content/advertising in an environment where keywords aren’t the way people navigate.
In any case, check out the company, and kudos to Scott.
Psychohistory 
Apple ATG Internship ’97 ruled! Errr, that is, until we were disbanded.
Hey Adam,
Thanks for the mention! I saw your earlier post that said there’d be an upcoming item about a new startup by a friend — I was thinking, “I should get him to write about mine too!”
Just so you and others know, we’re not focused on the audio advertising opportunity at the moment, though it may be something we explore later on. For now, we’re just focused on improving the experience of listening to music by adding a sense of community, some useful context, and hopefully more interactivity. If any of your readers want an invite to the alpha, drop me an email via the link on my blog.
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the cost of a degree is unreal these days, i agree.