Ole Obermann, TikTok‘s global head of music business development at ByteDance, is readying to depart the company, Variety has confirmed. Tracy Gardner will step into the role after Obermann exits in March.
Gardner began working for TikTok and its parent company ByteDance in November 2019 as head of label licensing and partnerships. She was formerly senior vice president, global business development and strategy at Warner Music Group.
Representatives for TikTok declined Variety‘s request for comment. Obermann is set to fulfill a role at another, undisclosed music company following his departure in March.
In an internal memo issued by Obermann addressed his staff, and published by Music Business Worldwide, the exec writes, “I think that the best way for me to say goodbye is to recap my five and a half years at TikTok through the music that has moved me and our billion users over the years.” Obermann cites the success of Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road,” “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac, Charli xcx’s “Brat” and Lola Young’s “Messy” on the platform.
Obermann joined TikTok in 2019 from his previous post at Warner Music as chief digital officer, where he led the ship on major digital partnerships, helping expand commercial activities, and overseeing the creation of WMG Boost, the group’s seed-stage investment fund. Prior to Warner, Obermann spent a decade at Sony Music and led the company through negotiations with YouTube, Spotify and more.
Obermann was with TikTok amongst some of the company’s most contentious face-offs, most prominently their tense 2024 negotiation with Universal Music Group (which ended with a licensing agreement), and their dispute with Merlin, a digital rights agency representing independent labels.
“As you know, we had a couple of big licensing challenges,” Obermann told Hits Daily Double in December. “I spent several months incredibly deep in that situation [UMG], but I’m really happy where it all landed. In the five-plus years I’ve been at TikTok, the relationship with Universal has never been better… And then obviously there’s the Merlin thing. It is a shame that it became us-against-Merlin in the press, because as I said a few times publicly, it really wasn’t about us versus Merlin… It was just about us wanting to do direct deals with members of Merlin, because we think we can do a better job operationally working with those labels if we’re in direct deals with them.”
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