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EMI Promotes Ondrejka To EVP Digital Marketing

Merrill Exits After Less Than A Year

EMI
UPDATED: Cory Ondrejka, who just last year joined EMI after a stint as co-founder Linden Lab's Second Life, has been promoted to the newly-created position of Executive Vice President Digital Marketing. Douglas Merrill has stepped down as President of Digital and COO of its New Music unit.  Merrill joined EMI from Google less than a year ago.

Cory emi
With digital sales comprising more than 20% of EMI's revenues, the company is
completing the integration of all digital functions into its overall operations and will no longer run a standalone unit. In his new role, Ondrejka will "help to advance the company’s digital marketing capability, developing new consumer and market insight resources and leading EMI’s experimentation with new digital marketing and product models in order to provide the best service to its artists and their fans."

From The Official Statement

EMI Music CEO, Elio Leoni-Sceti, said: “Cory is a highly talented executive with a passion for music and a unique technology-based skillset. He will help us deliver our goal of leveraging the power of digital across our business, particularly in the key areas of consumer understanding and analytics, content creation and digital marketing in order to strengthen the relationship and interaction between our artists and their fans.“

Leoni-Sceti added, “I would like to thank Douglas for his contribution to the company and to wish him well for the future.”

Cory Ondrejka's Official Biography:

Cory Ondrejka was formerly EMI’s senior vice president, digital strategy. Since joining the company last year from Second Life developer Linden Lab, he has helped create and implement a new digital strategy including building a world-class digital engineering team and infrastructure in San Francisco, instituting modern, agile software development practices and tools and helping to transform the company's approach to analytics.

Prior to EMI, Ondrejka was the co-founder of Linden Lab, where he led the development of the virtual world Second Life. In addition to developing the core code and building the company from 4 to 250 people, Ondrejka drove multiple initiatives that generated enormous value from user participation, creation, and collaboration. The ecosystems he helped create led directly to the success of Second Life, as well as the ongoing use of Second Life as a platform for music, education, and business. Before Linden Lab, Ondrejka travelled an eclectic path from the U.S. Naval Academy and nuclear power to defence contracting and video game development.

More recently, he has served as a visiting professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California, where he taught a course on online communities and coordinated the MacArthur grant driving research for the Public Diplomacy and Network Culture Project.

Ondrejka received a B.S. in Weapons and Systems Engineering and Computer Science from the United States Naval Academy.

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