Sony, Vivendi Name Music Executives

Sony Corp.’s Sony Music Entertainment and Vivendi Universal’s Universal Music Group on Monday named two UMG executives to lead their much-anticipated online music distribution service.

Andy Schuon will serve as president and chief executive of Press play, previously known as Duet, and Michael Bebel will be the chief operating officer.

A former programming executive at MTV, Schuon was president and chief operating officer of Farmclub.com, a Web site devoted initially to unsigned bands.

Bebel was a business development executive at UMG’s ELabs, working on new technologies for distributing music. Pressplay hopes to launch its U.S. services by late summer, with Yahoo its only announced customer to date.