Beats Music co-creator leaves Spotify for Apple Music

Music technology veteran, Fredric Vinna, has left his long-time post at Spotify to work with past business partners at Apple Music.

Stockholm-born Vinna, along with David Hyman, co-created early paid music streaming service MOG in 2005, one year before Spotify’s launch in 2006. MOG was purchased in July 2012 by Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre’s Beats Electronics. A month earlier in June 2012, it entered Australia in partnership with Telstra; its local launch marked MOG’s first territory outside the US.

Fredric Vinna

The MOG service stayed live until April 2014, after which it was shut down – with the exception of Australia where it continued to operate under the Telstra brand until August last year.

Its shuttering had been long expected. Beats purchased MOG to use its technology to build its own streaming service; that tech was sold to Apple for US$3.2 billion in May 2014.

Now Vinna is back working with past partners Iovine and Dre at Apple Music. According to LinkedIn he’s been working in the platform’s Design department at its San Francisco headquarters for five months.

Music Ally broke the news, having unearthed a pay-walledprofile in Swedish newspaper Dagens Industri.

The profile features a quote from Vinna about MOG boss David Hyman being fired by Jimmy Iovine during a private-jet flight:“It was like we were going to build a Ferrari but had people who could build a go-kart.”

Hyman made headlines amidst Apple’s Beats buy-out when he filed a lawsuit claiming Beats let him go so he couldn’t claim an equity stake in the company.

The news follows the exit long-time Spotify employee Jonathan Forster, who was hired by Daniel Ek in 2007.

Forster, who held roles at Spotify as GM of Europe, MD of the Nordics, and most recently VP of Sales for EMEA, has not announced his next move.

Spotify is expected to launch its IPO in the second half of 2017.