Mark Chasan

Mark Chasan was born in Los Angeles, California as the first of three sons[6] to Roslyn and Fred Chasan[7] He started playing music at age 10, studying drums, percussion, and piano[8] and later became professionally known as Guruvie[9] for his music and compositions.[10]

He graduated with both Bachelor of Laws and Juris Doctor degrees[11] in 1985 from Western State University's College of Law and became a lawyer,[12] opening his practice in Los Angeles.

In 1995, Chasan founded eMusic in Marina del Ray, California,[13] which aimed to create a new market sector for digital media sales. Chasan pioneered new technology allowing for digital audio clips, album art, and user reviews to be posted to the website.[14] The service quickly gained adoption and eclipsed 100,000 titles and features.[14] Later that year, Billboard magazine featured Chasan and eMusic alongside Ticketmaster as the top ten digital media retailers.[14]

In the next year, Chasan and his team invented new technology to address the early limitations with digital media streaming, aimed at reducing download times and increasing the sound quality,[15] while still keeping affordable prices for consumers.[16] Additional server bandwidth was needed beyond what was commercially available at the time, leading Chasan to found Webcentral,[17] one of the first cloud co-hosting, and co-location data center companies.[2] Webcentral grew to power the websites of Caltrans, Re/Max, AudioNet/Broadcast.com[18] and in 1997 Chasan sold Webcentral to Interworld Communications.[19]

In 1998, Chasan partnered with Nordic Entertainment to increase the catalogue available to eMusic customers.[8] In 1998, eMusic and its affiliates including music label Nordic Entertainment[20] and logistics business Creative Fulfillment merged with Goodnoise[1] forming a new company which continued to be known as eMusic.[21] The combined company went public on Nasdaq in 1999 using the eMusic name.[22]

After eMusic went public and Webcentral was acquired, Chasan became a professional angel investor[23] and later led IBM's digital media consulting division.[24] He then co-founded Publex Ventures,[25] a technology venture capital firm which specialized in accelerating the growth of early-stage companies with IPOs and PIPEs.[5] After exiting Publex, Chasan founded Transformative in 2005, a consulting company focused on eco-social impact businesses,[3] and in 2010 AWE Global, a development company for sustainable and regenerative communities.[26]

In 2022, Chasan published Living in AWE, which was featured on Amazon’s new top selling books lists in environmental economics[27] on Amazon.[28] Additionally, he has written on a variety of environmental, social, and corporate governance subjects in sources such as HuffPost[29] and Planetary Experts[30] and spoken at conferences such as BETOS,[31] Clean Tech Innovation & Growth,[32] and Sustainatopia.[4]

• eMusic