Billionaire Leonard Blavatnik has hired Robert Kyncl as the new chief executive of Warner Music, opting for a tech executive steeped in experience at YouTube and Netflix to lead the world’s third-largest record label.
Kyncl will in 2023 replace Steve Cooper, a corporate turnround specialist who steered Warner Music through the music industry’s transition to streaming. Cooper oversaw a return to growth for the label, which represents artists including Lizzo, Ed Sheeran and Bruno Mars.
Blavatnik said Kyncl was “the right CEO to meet this moment”.
“His command of technology to serve creativity will unlock new opportunities at scale for artists, songwriters and their teams.”
The appointment of Kyncl, who had previously been chief business officer at YouTube, comes as the music industry has gone from strength to strength thanks to the rise of streaming, fuelling double-digit revenue growth for the big record labels.
Warner and its peers, however, face an inevitable slowdown from the explosive growth during the early years of Spotify and have been searching for new sources of revenue — such as licensing their songs for use on TikTok, Peloton bikes and even therapeutics apps that use music to help sick people.
Until recently, Kyncl spent years as the recipient of criticism from the music industry, which had slammed the Google-owned online video platform for paying too little for use of their songs.
But Kyncl will cross over from tech to music as the industry’s stance towards YouTube has softened, after YouTube launched its own paid music streaming service, and paid more money back to rightsholders.
Kyncl previously worked at Netflix during its early days, and helped transform the company from a DVD-by-mail business into a streaming service.
Blavatnik bought Warner for $3.3bn in 2011, when the music industry was in doldrums and Spotify had yet to catch on widely in the US. It has proven to be a very fruitful bet for the Ukrainian-born billionaire: the company is now valued at $13bn on the public stock market.
However, shares in Warner Music have dropped more than 40 per cent this year, as the broader stock market fell and investors fretted over the prospect of slowing growth for streaming.