MySpace still hasn't been able to find a CEO to run its music joint venture. And the engineers working on the project would like it to stay that way, TheDeal.com reports:

A source with knowledge of the situation said MySpace's top technology staff has pressed to delay hiring a chief executive until after the music venture kicks off.

"They've been telling [COO] Amit [Kapur] and [CEO] Chris [DeWolfe] that hiring someone now would be a bad idea and a terrible strategic error," the source said, noting that conflict over the hiring has persisted for months. "They told them, 'We absolutely need leadership, but we needed it three months ago, or three months from now.' "

This somewhat jibes with what we'd heard about the project. The difference is that in our version, the tech team was supposedly making this argument earlier this spring. But if reporter Paul Bonanos has gotten this right, and these are indeed present-tense concerns, that doesn't bode well for next month's launch.

Then again, tech types love to gripe, right? So what's the big deal? And how hard can it be to build a music site, anyway? While DeWolfe and company like to describe MySpace music as a revolutionary development, everything they're talking about -- streaming music, music downloads, music videos, etc -- has been done many times on the Web already.

What is making the project difficult, we're told, is MySpace's decision not build it as a standalone site, as NBC and Fox did with Hulu. Instead, MySpace Music will be layered in to MySpace itself. Strategically, that makes plenty of sense, since the idea is to leverage the network's huge base of music-centric users. But that also means engineers have to dig directly into the site's infrastructure, which is rickety at best. Which means building the project is slow and difficult work. Would that go any faster if the company had a CEO in place? Depends on who you ask.

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