UPDATED: Spotify, the world’s leading music-streaming service, has named Dawn Ostroff as its new Chief Content Officer. According to the announcement, Ostroff, who was previously president of entertainment at Conde Nast, will be based at Spotify’s New York office and will lead all aspects of its content partnerships across music, audio and video. Specifically, she will oversee the company’s Shows & Editorial (including playlists, headed by Nick Holmsten), Studios & Video (headed by Courtney Holt), Creator Services (Troy Carter), Creator Marketplace (Charlie Hellman), and Content Operations departments (Sam Young).
At Conde Nast Entertainment — which Ostroff cofounded upon joining the parent company in 2011 — she was tasked with developing film, TV and digital products from its brands, which included such magazines as the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Vogue, Details and others. At the Conde Nast NewFront last month, she announced that Wired, GQ and Bon Appetit are slated to become the first magazine brands within Condé Nast to support their own fully programmed streaming channels, and touted the 12 billion views CNE drew in 2017 to its digital video efforts across its social, syndicated and owned-and-operated properties. She has no music-business background.
Spotify’s previous chief content officer, Stefan Blom, came from a music-industry and telco background and left the company in January after a largely unsuccessful move into video, which was announced as a growth area with great fanfare when former VH1 chief Tom Calderone joined as Spotify’s head of content partnerships in March 2016. Calderone left just 15 months later after its original video shows, including the Russell Simmons-produced “Traffic Jams,” failed to catch on.
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Ostroff was previously entertainment president of The CW network and from 2002 to 2006 was president of the UPN Network, where she developed the reality series “America’s Next Top Model.” She headed programming at Lifetime from 1996-2002.
Later on Tuesday, Condé Nast Entertainment announced that it will be led on an interim basis by Sahar Elhabashi, COO of the video entertainment division, until the company hires a replacement for Ostroff.
