Clio Music Names Monte Zweben as Executive Chairman
March 20, 2012
Entrepreneurial Executive with Over 20 Years of Successful Start-Up Experience Joins Innovative Music Search Technology Company
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – March 20, 2012 – Orpheus Media Research (d/b/a Clio™ Music), the developer of the first music analysis, search and discovery platform that allows users to use music to find music, has named Monte Zweben as the Company’s executive chairman. In this role, Zweben will be responsible for the overall strategic direction, business development and leadership of the Company.
Founded by musicians, Clio Music has developed the first technology platform to create a musical context and grammar that “understands” and interprets musical mood. Currently, the Company offers two solutions: the Clio Genome Generator, an automated metadata generator, and the Clio Sounds-Like Search, a search engine that enables users to use music to find music.
“As we take Clio Music into the next phase of its evolution, it was vital to bring in an accomplished executive like Monte to grow the business,” said Vince Menichelli, OMR board member and Managing Director, Trestle Ventures. “We believe that combining Clio’s unique technological advantage with the creativity and expertise of Monte and his team will allow the technology to transform the music search and discovery paradigm.”
“OMR’s goal is to catalog the world’s music independent of genre, cultural context or other metadata,” says Dr. Greg Wilder, Chief Science Officer and Founder of OMR. “Words should help to narrow down music searches, not fundamentally limit or determine musical options. With Clio, both professional and casual music lovers are able to discover new music and artists that previously would have been outside the purview of current search technologies.”
“Clio Music has the capacity to completely revolutionize how we search for, and find, music, which is an exciting opportunity in such a dynamic and fast-moving market,” said Zweben. “Clio will power music search and discovery for production music catalogs, major label and indie label sync licensing catalogs, independent music aggregator and distributor catalogs, as well as online music streaming and purchasing applications.”
Prior to joining Clio Music, Zweben was the co-founder and chairman of SeeSaw Networks, a digital, place-based media company serving advertisers such as Disney, Ford, General Motors, Kraft and Microsoft. Before SeeSaw, Zweben was the founder and CEO of Blue Martini Software – the leader in e-commerce and multi-channel systems for retailers. Blue Martini went public on NASDAQ in one of the most successful IPOs of 2000, and is now part of Red Prairie. Zweben’s work on dialog marketing at Blue Martini was published in the 2005 Harvard Business Review article: The Perfect Message at the Perfect Moment. Zweben also founded and was the Chairman & CEO of Red Pepper Software, a leading supply chain optimization company, which merged with PeopleSoft in 2006.
Before his entrepreneurial career, Zweben managed the NASA Ames Artificial Intelligence Branch as Deputy Branch Chief. There he co-managed the research program, published his own research, and deployed operational systems. There his team won the Space Act Award for their work on the Space Shuttle Program. Monte has been playing guitar and loving music since he was 10, and is still hoping to gig after his software career. He has a Strat and a Telecaster, but has been checking out Les Pauls lately. He also takes piano lessons when he isn’t busy building companies.
About Clio Music
Clio Music is the developer of Clio, the only pure music-to-music search and discovery platform that uses music to find music, producing higher quality matches and analyzing music up to 1000x faster than existing keyword search technology. Clio combines deep musical expertise with search technology to deliver highly accurate and relevant matches based on mood and texture. Created by musicians, Clio is the first platform to look at musical context and grammar to understand and interpret musical mood and texture. By referencing the music directly, matches are more accurate and large catalogs of music can be quickly analyzed with or without metatags.