Tunes.com hit on Internet despite unlikely location
April 12, 1999
BY HOWARD WOLINSKY BUSINESS REPORTER
Chicago entrepreneur Howard Tullman admits it might be ``a little easier'' to run his company, Tunes.com, an entertainment and technology company, from Los Angeles, Silicon Valley or New York.
But he said the Internet makes it possible for businesses like his to be located in Chicago, far from the entertainment and technology capitals.
``It might be a little easier for us to be on the coasts,'' Tullman said.
| Background Position: Chairman, chief executive officer and one of the founders of Tunes.com. Background: Started JamTV Corp. in September 1996 to Webcast live music events. In October 1997, JamTV added 30 years of music archives and editorial content to its site from Rolling Stone magazine. On March 1, the company changed its name to Tunes.com. Tullman, who grew up in Highland Park, received his B.S. in economics from Northwestern University in 1967 and his J.D. from Northwestern School of Law in 1970. Working with former Illinois Gov. James R. Thompson, he developed a national Ford Foundation program for the study of criminal law. He practiced law in Chicago, specializing in litigation in the federal court, for 10 years. In 1980, he left the law and became an entrepreneur, founding CCC Information Services, which provided information on the value of lost or stolen vehicles to insurers. He sold the company in 1987. He went on to start several other technology-oriented companies, including Information Kinetics Inc., which developed and marketed a national computerized database of job candidates, and Imagination Pilots Inc., which developed educational and entertainment software. Tullman teaches an MBA class titled ``Start-Ups: Start to Finish'' at Northwestern's Kellogg Graduate School of Management, and writes Hindsight, a newsletter on entrepreneurship and management. He is an active art collector, lender and donor with relations with the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Milwaukee Art Museum and other museums. He invests in real estate and restaurants and owns an interest in world-class thoroughbreds, including Danzig and Mr. Prospector. His personal Web site, www.tullman.com, describes his interest in collecting vintage lunchboxes and Pez dispensers. |
``The best thing about the Web is it is distributed everywhere. We have people working for us in New York and San Francisco and Los Angeles. Our servers are in New Jersey and some are on the West Coast. Our largest generator of traffic is AOL, which is based in Virginia. With the Web, you have a global reach, so it really doesn't matter where you are.''
Tunes.com--which was JamTV until March 1--is one of the more popular sites on the Web. It's a music portal where fans can learn about performers, download music, watch Webcasts and buy music.
Tullman, 53, who grew up in Highland Park and received his law degree and bachelor's in economics from Northwestern University, said the Chicago area is not a technology backwater.
He sees an area ``rich'' in technology talent, with the presence here of such companies as 3Com Corp., Platinum Technology and Zebra Technology. He noted major Internet developments that came out of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, but he decried a ``talent drain'' from U. of I. to Silicon Valley.
Homegrown Chicago companies have to try harder than their counterparts on the coasts to stay up with technology developments, he said, because networks are not as well-established here to share such information as they are in the communities that seem to live and breathe technology.
``When you go to a cocktail party in Chicago, it's not clear to me that everybody and their dog is walking around talking about the brand new things,'' said Tullman.
``There is no question that in New York and the Silicon Valley, since it seems that everybody is starting a company that afternoon or sold a company yesterday, there is a lot of the discussion about totally bleeding-edge things.''
Tullman said such groups as the Chicago Software Association are trying to replicate the West Coast and East Coast networking and provide entrepreneurs with survival tools in workshops and informal social events. He said entrepreneurs can pick up tips on which lawyers and accountants locally are well-informed about technology.
``I really commend those activities because that's what you need to grow businesses,'' he said.
Tullman's entrepreneurship dates back to his college days when he and a friend, Larry Levy, now a well-established, Chicago-based restaurateur, set up a sandwich service in the dorms at Northwestern in the 1960s.
But he didn't really turn attention to the business until after working 10 years as an attorney.
``I became an entrepreneur because I was tired of being a lawyer,'' said the former federal trial lawyer. ``I discovered I was more interested in computers than legal practice.''
He started his first company, CCC Information Services, which provided information to insurers on how much they should pay for lost or stolen cars. He sold the company in 1987 for $100 million.
Since then, he started a half-dozen other companies, most with a technological orientation.
The most recent is Tunes.com, which is one of the 100 most-visited sites on the Web. The company has about 100 employees.
This business reflects the kind of agility Tullman said entrepreneurs need to change with changing times, responding to the needs expressed by their customers.
The company initially presented Webcasts of rock concerts. Then, it became an information service on rock groups, offering information from such popular music publications as Rolling Stone, Down Beat and The Source.
Now it offers downloads of increasingly popular MP3 format music files, which many music labels see as a threat to their domination of their industry.
With MP3, bands can cut out the middlemen labels and sell directly to their fans over the Net.
He said the new world of music, thanks to the Internet, will be more democratic, offering opportunities to more artists and reducing the power of the traditional gatekeepers.
``With the Web, you'll see hundreds of more artists make it and they may never have a label connection,'' said Tullman, who over the past decade has taught entrepreneurship to seasoned executives as well as MBA students at Northwestern.
He said Tunes.com works with the MP3 musicians as well as the traditional record labels: ``We think of ourselves as Switzerland, as technology agnostic, compliant with all the laws and trying to figure out how to work with everybody. We think that the difference is that some people acknowledge change and some people resist change. Change is coming. We know that.''