Steve Jobs tops list of online music "Powergeeks"

NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - Steve Jobs, the father of the iPod, was on Tuesday crowned the undisputed king of the online music revolution by U.S. music magazine Blender, topping a list of the 25 most influential people in Web music.

The magazine's "Powergeek 25" list was compiled to show the behind-scenes-players reshaping the way people listen to, buy and watch music.

"Music fans spend much of their day, if not their life, sitting in front of their computer, discovering and downloading music," Blender's editor-in-chief Craig Marks said in a statement.

"Today's power brokers no longer work in the steel-and-glass towers of the traditional record business; instead, they're tech geeks, bedroom bloggers and Silicon Valley visionaries."

He said Jobs, who co-founded Apple Inc. and is chief executive of the company, had proved to be a technology trendsetter.

"The iTunes Store and the iPod have done more to change the way people listen to music than anything since the CD, and maybe since the sound recording," Marks said.

The magazine put Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe, co-founders of the popular social networking site MySpace as second in "The Powergeek 25."

They were credited with making made good on the Internet's promise to "level the music-industry playing field, allowing basement bands to effortlessly share their music, inform fans about tour dates and build an audience online".

In third place were the creators of YouTube, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, whose file-sharing site has become "the star-maker MTV used to be".