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Former CollegeHumor Boss Has a New Gig, at the World's Biggest Dance Music Promoter

Paul Greenberg has his EDM moment.

SFX Entertainment
Peter Kafka covers media and technology, and their intersection, at Vox. Many of his stories can be found in his Kafka on Media newsletter, and he also hosts the Recode Media podcast.

Paul Greenberg spent the last three years trying to get twentysomethings to laugh. New gig: Trying to get twentysomethings to dance.

Or, at least, get them to participate in “electronic music culture,” which is the way SFX Entertainment describes its business. SFX is a conglomerate focused on “electronic dance music,” and Greenberg is its new president. SFX announced the hire, via an SEC filing, late last month.

SFX is a rollup created by impresario Robert Sillerman that specializes in the promoters that put together giant dance music concerts and festivals. SFX is also trying to expand beyond live events, via webcasts of its shows and other ancillary revenue streams.

Greenberg’s last job was running CollegeHumor for Barry Diller’s IAC, and prior to that he had a short stint at Time Inc., and a longer one running TV Guide’s digital operations. But this isn’t the first time he has spent in the music business: Early in his career he worked at MTV Networks, as well as music licensing company MediaNet.

Fun pop quiz: Would you rather work for Diller, a boss who has been known to have a rough edge or two, or Sillerman, who is also not cut from the standard CEO cloth? Before you answer, make sure you watch this video of Sillerman getting off his plane last month. On a subsequent earnings call, he said the clip was “fairly indicative, I think, of the way internally that we enjoy ourselves, and we’re willing to push the envelope.”

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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