Pelson began his career in 1988 at
Sun Microsystems, holding marketing, sales and product-development roles focused on media-industry clients. In June 1995, Pelson joined writer Carey Earle and designer Tom Livaccari to launch
Word Magazine, one of the web's first ad-supported multimedia
webzines. Seeing commercial potential in the nascent Internet, he and partners spun the editorial startup into Concrete Media in 1996. Pelson served as chairman and chief executive of both Concrete Media and Bolt during the first dot-com boom. In 2006, Pelson re-entered the music sector, co-founding uPlayMe, a desktop application that matched listeners in real time;
Wired dubbed it an effort to make "music social again" without costly label licences. In the same year,
Warner Music Group appointed him senior vice-president for global consumer marketing, where he built direct-to-fan businesses across the label group; he left in mid-2008 to return as uPlayMe's chief executive. He is also a co-founder of SunPress Vinyl, a record pressing plant. From 2009 to 2016, Pelson worked for
Sony Music Entertainment and
Sony Corporation of America. At
Sony Music, he oversaw the Direct to Consumer global operations and was the CEO of MyPlay, Sony's music video platform from 2008 to 2013. He also served as an executive producer of
The X Factor Digital Experience. In March 2019, Pelson became
chief operating officer of
AREA15, a 200,000 sq ft immersive retail and entertainment district west of the
Las Vegas Strip. Pelson oversaw operations, leasing and events as AREA15 welcomed nearly four million visitors in its first three years. Since 2020, Pelson has been a director and, from 2023, nominating-committee chair, of Urban Art (formerly Urban Arts Partnership), a New York nonprofit delivering technology-and-arts programmes in under-resourced public schools. He has also served on the board of
Teach For America. ==Personal life==