Warner Music Japan has appointed Dr. Kenji Kitatani to the resurrected position of chairman of the label division, efficient instantly. Dr. Kitatani will work carefully with WMJ’s longtime president and CEO, Kazuyuki “Kaz” Kobayashi, to spice up the corporate’s presence within the globe’s No. 2 music market.

Dr. Kitatani presently holds the title of chairman of DAZN Japan, a sports activities streaming platform, and he recurrently writes for Forbes Japan and is a professor and director on the Institute for Content and Technology Integration at Kanazawa Institute of Technology. (His priors in academia additionally embody school roles at Washington State University and Indiana University.) In the late Nineteen Nineties and early 2000s, he held senior govt roles at Sony Corporation and between 2011 and 2017 acted as president of Avex International Holdings, the nation’s largest impartial music leisure conglomerate.

Following his time at Avex Inc., Dr. Kitatani grew to become govt vp of Asia and govt director for Japan at AEG, leaving in late 2021 earlier than taking over a bevy of advisory roles at firms together with Mitsubishi, NTTdocomo, InnoCan Pharma and FM Tokyo, amongst others.

“I am delighted to welcome Dr Kenji Kitatani to Warner Music and am pleased that such a distinguished executive has agreed to take on this challenge,” mentioned Kobayashi. “We’ve achieved a lot in the last decade at Warner Music Japan, but our industry never stands still and we need to continue to adapt if we are to keep being the first choice for our country’s most exciting artists.”

Though technically not changing anybody as chairman of Warner Music Japan, Dr. Kitatani is not the primary govt to carry the vaunted title. The final particular person to occupy the place was trade veteran Kei Ishizaka, Kobayashi’s predecessor as CEO till Ishizaka’s departure in 2014.

“This is an exciting time in the Japanese music industry,” mentioned Kitatani. “I am delighted to take up this new role at Warner Music, working with Kaz on the continuing evolution of the company as we build the most forward-thinking label in the Japanese market.”