Today, Butterworth, 32, is still at the helm, but SonicNet is a very different kind of beast. In the past five years, SonicNet has acquired music news services, databases and Internet radio stations; in turn, it has been acquired first by TCI Music and, earlier this year, by MTV. Butterworth currently serves as president and CEO of MTVi -- MTV's Internet division -- overseeing not only SonicNet, but MTV.com, VH1.com and the convergence of MTV's Internet brands with its cable shows. Youthful, opinionated and exuberant, Butterworth has spent his career as an advocate for youth interests. He began his career as executive director of Rock the Vote, a nonprofit organization that, with the aid of MTV, encouraged young voters to get involved in the 1992 elections. Today he thinks more about how to encourage kids to open their minds to new kinds of music -- and, of course, to buy that music online from one of MTV's sites.

Salon Technology spoke with Butterworth about current and future changes to the music industry, thanks to the Net, from convergence programming to digital downloads. Will the youth of the future be demanding its MTVi?

Why did you move from political activism with Rock the Vote to a music BBS like SonicNet?

I didn't found SonicNet but I was friends with the founder and I didn't want to be in politics for my whole career. In 1994, I got obsessed with AOL and had my first moment of realization that the online medium was something really incredible that would empower people and grow.

When I saw SonicNet, which at that time was just a few months old and was a BBS with four modems and a 486 box, I thought, gee, we're going to create the next national music brand and build a competitor to MTV.

Rather big thinking for a little BBS, wasn't it?

I thought this was the only way you could create a nationally recognized music brand, because the economics wouldn't support a new national cable network or a music magazine. But I also thought that consumers really needed control over their music choices and they wanted access to much more diverse programming than they could get.

Remember, this was 1994. There had been a lot of consolidation in the radio industry, with fewer formats available on the FM dial. MTV had been very successful with lifestyle programming, but as a result was dedicating fewer hours per day to music video programming. So consumers were getting fewer choices on broadcast media; at the same time the music itself was becoming much more fragmented with electronica and hip-hop and all kinds of rock coming in the aftermath of grunge.

There was this combination of real demand for control of information, and an opportunity to give artists a way to communicate directly to fans, and fans to access artists directly. I thought that it was possible, if you were smart about it, to build a brand that could migrate from platform to platform as technology changed and bandwidth expanded.

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