Paul Brown, who is leaving as partnerships SVP at Spotify, is becoming chief operating officer for Mendeley, a start-up often described as a Last.fm for research papers, say MediaWeek and TechCrunch, and Brown confirmed to paidContent:UK.
Mendeley’s desktop application scans PDF research papers and their bibliographies for metadata, and augments entries with information from web databases.
From there, users can add notes to papers, cite the papers in the right format in Word and build networks from people researching similar areas.
It’s a free service, with premium extras on top.
The company raised $2 million in February 2009 from Last.fm backer Stefan Glänzer, former WMG exec Alex Zubilaga and Skype alumni’s Ambient Sound Investments arm.
It’s a fair old departure for Brown, who has spent several years in digital music companies following corporate law training, but Brown tells paidContent:UK he will remain in digital music, likely through consulting for Topspin Media.
» Hear Mendeley CEO Victor Henning alongside me in last week’s Tech Weekly podcast.