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Meet the people behind TuneCore

Executive Team

Scott Ackerman, Chief Operating Officer

Scott brings more than 25 years of experience in managing operations for several national and global consumer brands. As former Vice President of Customer Care, Scott was responsible for further fostering eHarmony's commitment to delivering world-class care. The department was most recently recognized by the American Business Association "Stevie Award" for Customer Service Department of the Year 2009 and IPQC Call Center Excellence Award Winner, Best in Class Call Center 2009.

Prior to joining eHarmony, Scott served as the vice president for customer care and call centers for Cendant where he was responsible for developing and managing customer service operations for the Orbitz, CheapTickets and Lodging.com brands. Under Scott's leadership, Orbitz ranked No. 1 in online customer experience in 2003 and 2004, and was the first travel web company to take a proactive approach and send care alerts updating customers about events that could affect their upcoming trip. Other past experience includes executive operations responsibilities at American Airlines, Northwest Airlines and US Airways. He holds a J.D. from the Beasley School of Law at Temple University and a B.A. in business communications from Pepperdine University.

Arne Jokela, Chief Technology Officer

Arne has spent the last 20 years working at the intersection of media and technology. From 2008-2010 he was President and CTO at Fotolog, a pioneering social networking website born in New York and owned by the French company Hi-media. Previously, he was Vice President of Technology at American Express Publishing, where he modernized the IT, web, and software development infrastructures of the leading publisher of luxury lifestyle magazines, including Travel + Leisure, Food & Wine, and Departures Magazine.

Arne began his online career at AOL in various product management positions, including search, mobile, and personalization for the Digital City, MapQuest, and Moviefone brands. Earlier in his professional life, he was a game designer and producer for Learn Technologies/Voyager, an educational software company funded by Time Warner Interactive.

Arne studied at Princeton University and the University of California at Berkeley. He is also a cofounder and board member of the New York independent theater company Clubbed Thumb.

Jamie Purpora, President TuneCore Publishing

Jamie comes to TuneCore with 17 years of experience in music publishing administration at Bug Music Inc. Bug Music became one of the largest independent music publishers in the world and was named #99 from Inc. Magazines top 100 fastest growing private companies in 2009. From 1997-2001, Jamie was Director of Royalties and from 2001 -2011 he was Senior Vice President of Administration.

Jamie was responsible for overseeing publishing administration for Bug’s entire catalog, which consisted of over 300,000 copyrights. Clients included Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters, Iggy Pop, Stevie Ray Vaughan, The Guess Who, The Kings of Leon, Johnny Cash, Ryan Adams, Wilco, Tradition Music, Average White Band, Del Shannon and the Trio/Quartet Music catalog. Jamie also served on the Publisher’s Technology Board at the Harry Fox Agency for the last three years.

Ewald Christians, VP Product Development

Ewald is currently responsible for organizing TuneCore’s product strategy and overseeing the product management function.

Ewald joined TuneCore in 2007 from MediaNet where served as Direct of Label Relations. At MediaNet, Ewald helped build online music services and negotiated content licenses for major consumer brands, including Viacom’s MTV, Yahoo, Microsoft, Samsung, Virgin Digital, HMV, Target and AOL.

Prior to MediaNet, Ewald worked as Production Manager at the news site Salon.com (2000-2003). In 1999, Ewald helped found MP3Lit.com, the first online service focused solely on offering quality-spoken word and audio literature in the MP3 format, which was subsequently acquired by Salon Media Group.

Julian Groeger, VP Marketing

With over 10 years of experience in interactive marketing & online community management coupled with extensive domestic and international operations expertise, Julian brings a long record of accomplishment, innovation and expertise to his position.

A true expert in consumer online behavior and digital tactics to foster online community loyalty, engagement and retention, Julian develops the marketing strategy and vision that enables TuneCore to stay on the forefront of digital music distribution.

He has held leadership positions at many of the top online market research companies - Harris Interactive, Greenfield Online & Lightspeed Research - both in the US and abroad. Julian joined TuneCore in 2012 from Schlesinger Associates where he served as Vice President, Online Communities.

Julian graduated with a Bachelors Degree in International Business & Economics from the State University of New York as well as holds a MBA in E-Commerce & Marketing from the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Board of Directors

Gill Cogan

Gill brings more than 25 years of venture capital investing experience in software, communications and semiconductors as well as building and leading venture capital firms.

Prior to Opus, he was a founding partner and Managing Partner of Lightspeed Venture Partners. He was also Managing General Partner at Weiss, Peck & Greer Venture Partners. Gill has invested in a wide variety of early stage information technology companies such as Vantive (NASDAQ: VNTV, acquired by PeopleSoft (NASDAQ:PSFT)), Harmonic Lightwaves, Inc. (NASDAQ: HLIT), Visigenic Software (NASDAQ: VSGN, acquired by Borland (NASDAQ: BORL)), Airgate PCS, Inc. (NASDAQ: PCSA, acquired by Alamosa Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: APCS)), P-Com (NASDAQ: PCOM), Kalpana (acquired by Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO)), and many others.

Prior to joining WPG in 1990, Gill managed the West Coast operations of Adler & Company and was on the team that made investments in companies such as Mercury Interactive (NASDAQ: MERQ, acquired by Hewlett Packard (NYSE: HPQ)), Zoran Corporation (NASDAQ: ZRAN) and IXYS (NASDAQ: IXYS). He was one of three General Partners who formed the first independent Israeli venture fund in 1985. Gill has significant operating experience as a result of his tenure as CEO of Formtek Inc., a systems company based on technology developed at the Carnegie-Mellon University, which was acquired by Lockheed Corporation. He is Chairman of the Board of Directors of Electronics for Imaging (NASDAQ: EFII) and serves on the Board of Directors of several privately held companies. Gill holds an MBA from UCLA.

Marty Alberston

Marty has been with Guitar Center since 1979. Mr. Albertson joined Guitar Center as a salesperson and has held various positions of increasing responsibility with Guitar Center since that time. In 1980, he served as Advertising Director and in 1984 became National Sales Manager. Thereafter, in 1985 Mr. Albertson became Vice President of Corporate Development, and became the Vice President of Sales and Marketing in 1987. From 1990 to 1999, Mr. Albertson served as our Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. In 1999, Mr. Albertson became our President and Co-Chief Executive Officer. In 2004, Mr. Albertson became our Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Albertson was elected a director in 1996.

Effective November 1, 2010 Mr. Albertson retired as Chief Executive Officer and will remain as non-executive Chairman of the Board.

Fred Bourgoise

Fred was co-architect of the groundbreaking worldwide music publishing administration service Bug Music. He was President and co-owner from 1976 until its 2006 sale to Spectrum Equity Investors. From its humble and committed beginning, Bug became the music administration gold standard and trusted island for publishers, songwriters, copyrights, and artists. While experiencing meteoric growth and success Bug evolved into the largest independent music publisher in the pre-digital-download-streaming world, with offices in Los Angeles, Nashville, New York, London, and Munich, Germany. After the Spectrum purchase, Fred continued to serve as a consultant and board member for Bug until 2009.

Fred first assisted TuneCore in 2010 as a consultant. In June 2011 he was elected to the Board of Directors.