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Yahoo Media reorganizes, and Rogers departs

Ian Rogers decided life at the top of a music startup called Topspin Media looked better than his gig at Yahoo Music.

The effect of another reorganization at Yahoo may have helped Rogers decide to walk away from a post where his sensible visions of music and the modern Internet-powered world made him a noteworthy figure.

"I’ll be joining founders Peter Gotcher and Shamal Ranasinghe as the CEO at a still-mostly-stealth company called Topspin Media. Our mission is to help artists earn a living through software," Rogers said on his blog. He hinted at the startup's aims by linking to an old article about Gotcher in Wired.

That 1995 article discussed Gotcher's work on Digidesign, a turnkey solution to turn a PC into a recording studio. Thirteen years ago, the price tag for that would have been $10,000 to $25,000.

These days, a copy of GarageBand, Apple's music software, comes with their $79 iLife suite. It doesn't seem like Topspin would want to compete with Apple directly. Gotcher's discussion in Wired focused on inexpensive production and a dream of high-speed distribution that could put indie musicians on equal footing with major labels.

News of a recent reorganization at Yahoo, as noted by Valleywag, has Rogers' former video projects going to Yahoo Media head Scott Moore. He shuffled things around just ahead of big Yahoo quarterly meetings in its operations in Santa Monica and in Sunnyvale next week.

As for Rogers, news of his work will be on a wait and see basis, until Topspin Media pulls out of stealth mode.