My Top 4 Picks To Become Head Of Google Music Plus A Dark Horse Candidate

(UPDATED) The net has been filled with rumors about who Goolgle might choose to head its new music initiative. I have no illusions that Eric Schmidt, Sergey Brin and Larry Page pay any more attention to what I think than Tila Tequila does to writing meaningful lyrics, but I couldn't help but offer my own list of candidates.

My Top Picks To Head Google Music

(in no particular order)

• Ted Cohen – One of the recorded music industry's first digital executives, Cohen knows all of the roadblocks that Google faces and the people that will knock them over.
• Ian Rogers – From Yahoo! to Topspin, Ian Rogers has become the defacto voice of music tech. He's smart, capable and well liked.
• Greg Scholl – He's an executive at NBC Universal now, but before that, he was president and CEO of The Orchard. That means he knows music, digital and how to survive in a public traded company.
• Michael Robertson – He helped start it all with MP3.com and most of his ventures since have been music tech based. He sold Gizmo5 to Google last year, so they certainly know his work.

My Dark Horse Candidate

• Scott Ambrose-Reilly – I know, it's hard to imagine Google hiring anyone who is nicknamed "Bullethead" and who used to manage Mojo Nixon.  But this guys digital music roots run deep – from the early eMusic through most of the then groundbreaking licencing deals that launched Amazon MP3.